‘When I saw the wave, I was paralysed with fear. I resigned myself to my fate’
The towering wave was about 300 yards from shore when Adi first saw it hurtling towards his family’s beachside home in the Indonesian town of Palu. Adi, 27, who uses only one name, was starting his pickup truck while his wife Waheda, 23, was coming towards him carrying 10-month-old Kanza, their first child.
The family had been trying to escape to safety after a 7.5 magnitude earthquake rocked the foundations of their house. They did not expect that disaster would cruelly strike twice.
“When I saw the wave I was paralysed with fear. It was as high as the coconut trees and I did not know what to do or where to go. I resigned myself to my fate,” said Adi.
His petrified wife began to run with the baby, and Adi braced himself for the impact as he sat inside his car.
“The wave was really powerful. When it hit it caused my car to roll several times. I held on to the steering wheel and the handle above the door,” he said.
Miraculously, Adi survived with only a few scratches and was able to pull himself out of the car window to climb to safety on top of the roof. The water had subsided to roughly waist deep and in the chaos he spotted his wife, managing to pull her to safety.
But Kanza was not there. “My son was ripped from my wife’s arms by the force of the wave,” he said.
As he recalled the horrific moment, his wife buried her face in his shoulder for comfort. “We feel traumatised,” he said.
Their story emerged as the official death toll passed 1,400, with aid agencies continuing to struggle to reach the most outlying areas.
The UK increased its contribution to £3million, with a flight laden with supplies from the Department for International Development due to leave Doncaster Sheffield airport early this morning.
The aid will include 1,300 shelter kits, 2,300 water purifiers and 1,000 solar lanterns to provide light in areas without electricity and power.
The ramped-up aid efforts came amid rising tensions on the ground, with the Indonesian armed forces deploying to protect property and keep order after several incidents of shops being ransacked.
“If there is looting again, we will quickly fire a warning shot and then shoot to immobilise,” Col Ida Dewa Agung Hadisaputra told Agence France Presse news agency.
Penny Mordaunt, the International Development Secretary, said the aid would be delivered into the disaster zone as quickly as possible, but that reaching the survivors was “extremely challenging given the devastation”. There were still large areas of what might be the worst-affected areas that have not been properly reached.
“The teams are pushing, they are doing what they can,” a spokesman added.
But like many thousands of others who survived the twin disaster that struck the northern coast of Sulawesi island on Friday evening, Adi and Waheda are growing increasingly tired of waiting.
Their home and second-hand electronics shop destroyed, they now live hand-to-mouth with about 50 others from their home village of Towale in a makeshift camp of tarpaulin tents on a hillside at the entrance of the town of Donggala.
The survivors, whose homes were flattened by the quake, must walk more than a mile to a river to get water for washing and cooking but they do not want to leave the high ground in case of another tsunami.
To eat, they must flag down aid convoys and beg for supplies. Motorbike spotters further down the road give them advance warning of the trucks so that they can block their path.
Gde Wiga, a security guard now living in the camp, said that they never forced the drivers to give them anything or looted the vehicles.
“We just ask for what we need, nothing more,” he said. “We feel neglected.”
Yesterday, five days after the twin disaster, the United Nations warned of “vast” unmet needs.
Almost 200,000 people need urgent help, the UN humanitarian office said, among them tens of thousands of children, with an estimated 66,000 homes destroyed or damaged.
In Geneva, the UN expressed frustration at the slow pace of the disaster response.
“There are still large areas of what might be the worst-affected areas that haven’t been properly reached,” Jens Laerke, from the UN’S humanitarian
office, told reporters. Survivors are battling thirst and hunger in hot and humid conditions with food and clean water in short supply.
The small Towale community offers a glimpse into the daily fight for survival as aid struggles to reach victims who have lost homes, livelihoods and loved ones.
The road between the towns of Donggala and Palu is a scene of apocalyptic destruction, with homes, shops, hotels and businesses reduced to ruined shells.
Upturned vehicles lie embedded in the rubble, offering a startling reminder of the brutal, indiscriminate force of nature.
The clean-up has not yet begun as rescue teams still search in the rubble for survivors. Every few metres, families can be seen gathered by the rubble of their homes, reluctant to leave even their ruined properties behind with nowhere else to go.
Their children stand solemnly and sometimes playfully, holding out boxes to passing cars, appealing to drivers to stop and donate to their families.
Arif, a motorbike taxi driver, stood by the rubble of the home where he lived with his wife and five children. Ruined clothes, kitchen utensils and other signs of his once normal family life visible in the wreckage.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said. “We just need help. If we get help then we will start to rebuild.”
About a mile further down the road, an extended family told of how they watched their eight adjacent homes completely crumble as the tsunami struck.
“The buildings had been cracked by the earthquake but they completely collapsed when the black wave came,” said Wasman Laido, 47.
The families had run for their lives when they saw it approach and had been saved by the hill behind their homes.
“I grabbed my elderly disabled mother on my back and ran with her,” he said.
“Now I don’t want to leave, I just want the government to help us reconstruct our homes.”
‘There are still large areas of the worstaffected areas that haven’t been properly reached’