Time running out for tsunami survivors

A tentative deadline of Friday set to find anyone still trapped under rubble

The death toll in Indonesia’s twin quake-tsunami disaster passed 1,400 yesterday, with time running out to rescue survivors and the UN warning of “vast” unmet needs.

National disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said the number of dead had risen to 1,407 across four areas around the ravaged seaside city of Palu, and 519 bodies had been already buried.

Authorities set a tentative deadline of Friday to find anyone still trapped under rubble, at which point — a week after this devastating double disaster — the chances of finding survivors will dwindle to almost zero.

Government rescue workers are focusing on half a dozen key sites around the city — the Hotel Roa-Roa where up to 60 people are still believed buried, a shopping mall, a restaurant and the Balaroa area where the sheer force of the quake turned the earth temporarily to mush.

At least 150 people are unaccounted for beneath the rubble, officials said. According to the UN’s humanitarian office almost 200,000 people need urgent help, among them tens of thousands of children, with an estimated 66,000 homes destroyed or damaged by the 7.5-magnitude quake and the tsunami it spawned.

Despite the Indonesian government urging foreign rescue teams to “stand down” because the crisis was in hand, residents in hard-hit, remote villages like Wani in Donggala province say little help has arrived and hope is fading.

“Twelve people in this area haven’t yet been found,” Mohammad Thahir Talib told AFP.

“In the area to the south, because there hasn’t been an evacuation we don’t know if there are bodies. It’s possible there are more,” the 39-yearold said.

In Geneva, the United Nations expressed frustration at the slow pace of the response.