PALU, September 30
The toll from an earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia soared on Sunday to 832 confirmed dead, with authorities fearing it will only climb as rescuers struggle to reach outlying communities cut off from communications and help.
Dozens of people were reported to be trapped in the rubble of two hotels and a mall in the city of Palu, which was hit by waves as high as 20 feet following the 7.5 magnitude earthquake on Friday.
A woman was pulled alive from the debris of the city’s Roa Roa Hotel, where up to 60 persons were believed trapped. Hundreds of people gathered at the wrecked mall searching for loved ones.
With most of the confirmed deaths from Palu, authorities are bracing for much worse as reports filter in from outlying areas, in particular, Donggala, a region of 300,000 people north of Palu and close to the epicentre of the quake, and two other districts.
Vice President Jusuf Kalla said the toll could rise into the thousands. President Joko Widodo visited a housing complex flattened when the quake liquefied the soil it stood on, and called for patience. “I know there are many problems that need to be solved in a short time, including communications,” he said. The ruins would be rebuilt, he said, as aftershocks rattled the region 48 hours after the quake.
Scores of residents shouted “we’re hungry, we need food” as soldiers distributed rations from a truck in one neighbourhood, while elsewhere television showed pictures of people making off with clothes and other items from a wrecked mall.
Internal Affairs Minister Tjahjo Kumolo said he had ordered authorities to help people get food and drink.
A spokesman for the National disaster mitigation agency, Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, said the affected area was bigger than initially thought, and rescuers only had good access to one of four affected districts - Palu. “We haven’t received reports from the three other areas.
Communication is still down, power is still out. We don’t know for sure what is the impact,” he said. “There are many areas where the search and rescue teams haven’t been able to reach,” Nugroho said, adding that teams needed heavy equipment to move broken concrete and debris.
Donggala town has been damaged badly, according to a reporter on the scene.
Five foreigners — three French, one South Korean and one Malaysian — were among the missing, Nugroho said. The 832 dead included people crushed in the quake and swept away by the tsunami. — Reuters
Warning system delay adds to deaths
- An early warning system that could have prevented some deaths in the tsunami that hit an Indonesian island on Friday has been stalled in the testing phase for years. Indonesia sits on the seismically active Pacific Ring of Fire
- The high-tech system of seafloor sensors, data-laden sound waves and fiber-optic cable was meant to replace a system set up after an earthquake and tsunami killed nearly 250,000 people in the region in 2004.
- But inter-agency wrangling and delays in getting just 1 billion rupiah ($69,000) to complete the project means the system hasn’t moved beyond a prototype developed with $3 million from the US National Science Foundation
- The meteorological and geophysics agency BMKG issued a tsunami warning after the quake but lifted it 34 minutes later, drawing criticism it had been too hasty. But officials estimated the waves had hit while the warning was in force
- The Associated Press first reported on the system in January 2017, when the project was awaiting Indonesian funding to lay the cables. Since then, agencies involved have suffered budget cuts and the project bounced back and forth between them
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