Hundreds Killed as Powerful Earthquake and Tsunami Hit Indonesia

The Indonesian government has called for international help to deal with
the aftermath of a devastating series of earthquakes and a tsunami in the island
region of Sulawesi that killed at least 832 people. President Joko Widodo
“authorised us to accept international help for urgent disaster-response” the
government’s head of investment Tom Lembong said, as dozens of aid agencies
and NGOs lined up to provide life-saving assistance and the government
struggled to come to terms with the sheer scale of the disaster. The strong 7.5-
magnitude quake struck on Friday, toppling buildings and sending walls of
seawater crashing into Palu, a city of about 350,000.
Exhausted survivors scoured makeshift morgues for loved ones, and
authorities struggled to dig out the living or assess the scale of the devastation in
more remote regions beyond Palu.
Grim warnings came that the eventual toll could reach thousands. “The
casualties will keep increasing,” said national disaster agency spokesman
Sutopo Purwo Nugroho. “We will start the mass burial of victims, to avoid the
spread of disease.” Burials were expected to start later today.
Rescuers raced against the clock and a lack of equipment to save those
still trapped in the rubble, with up to 60 people feared to be underneath one Palu
hotel alone.
Two survivors have been plucked from the rubble of the 80-room Hotel
Roa-Roa, the search and rescue agency said, and there could still be more alive.
Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue Agency released images of a 25-year-
old woman it identified as Fitri, who it said was pulled out of the rubble at 7pm
Sunday.
The agency released several images of the woman lying on an orange
plastic stretcher, covered in a white blanket. Desperate survivors turned to
looting shops for basics like food, water and fuel as police looked on, unwilling
or unable to intervene. “There has been no aid, we need to eat. We don’t have
any other choice, we must get food,” one man in Palu told AFP as he filled a
basket with goods from a nearby store.
 The disaster agency said a tsunami warning system, which might have
saved lives, had not worked for six years due to a lack of money. “Our funding
has been going down every year,” the disaster agency’s Nugroho said.

PORTS, BRIDGES, ROADS SHATTERED

Save The Children program director Tom Howells said access was a
“huge issue” hampering relief efforts. “Aid agencies and local authorities are
struggling to reach several communities around Donggala, where we are
expecting thereto be major damage and potential large-scale loss of life,”
Howells said. The national disaster agency said it believed about 71 foreigners
were in Palu when the quake struck, with most safe. Three French nationals and
a South Korean, who may have been staying at a flattened hotel, had not yet
been accounted for, it added. Getting enough aid in may prove a problem.
Satellite imagery provided by regional relief teams showed severe
damage at some of the area’s major ports, with large shipstossed on land, quays
and bridges trashed and shipping containers thrown around. A double-arched
yellow bridge had collapsed, its ribs twisted as cars bobbed in the water below.
A key access road had been badly damaged and was partially blocked by
landslides. The initial quake struck as evening prayers were about to begin in
the world’s biggest Muslim majority country on the holiestday of the week.

‘WHEN THE WAVE CAME, I LOST HER’

Many have spent the last two days desperately searching for loved ones.
One survivor, Adi, was hugging his wife by the beachwhen the tsunami struck
on Friday. He has no idea where she is now, or whether she is even alive.
“When the wave came, I lost her,” he said. “I was carried about 50 metres. I
couldn’t hold anything. The water was spinningme around,” he said. “This
morning I went back to the beach, I found my motorbike and my wife’s wallet.”
Others have centred their search aroundopen-air morgues, where the dead lay in
the baking sun — waiting to be claimed.
Hundreds of people gathered at the wrecked eight-storey Tatura Mall
searching for loved ones. “Grieve for the people of Central Sulawesi, we all
grieve together,” President Joko Widodo tweeted late on Sunday. Most of the
confirmed deaths were in Palu itself, and authorities are bracing for the toll to
climb as connections with outlying areas are restored. Of particular concern is
Donggala, a region of 300,000 people north of Palu and close to the epicentre of
the quake, and two other districts, which have been cut off from
communications since Friday.