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PALU, Indonesia – On Friday night, 10-year-old Mohammad Zaki was climbing a playground by the sea when the soil beneath him seemed to disappear.
Seriously injured and disoriented, Zaki was then hit by a gust of seawater, while large waves crashed down on this coastal town. He passed through the debris and, once past chaos, found that he was bleeding profusely and that his clothes had torn his body. He staggered towards the city and was found by a police officer.
"He had to climb on the roof of a car through a hole in the ground," said Rosmawati, his 33-year-old aunt who was sitting next to her hospital bed, grooming her wounds in Moisture overwhelming with a piece of cardboard. "He was brave."
Zaki waiting for five days an operation to repair a severe laceration in the stomach, one of the dozens of patients waiting for additional treatment at the Undanta public hospital – still without fuel for run its generators and therefore without electricity.
"I'm still in pain," he said from his bed in the hallway of the hospital.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo returned Wednesday for the second time in this torn city, and in the neighboring region of Donggala, which twice occurred a disaster – an earthquake of magnitude 7.5 and a tsunami – which claimed the lives of 1,407 people.
"The most important thing in a post-disaster situation is the speed of treatment!" Widodo, better known as Jokowi, said in a tweet. He appointed his vice president to lead the recovery efforts and the government agency responsible for disaster management deployed more than 6,000 people in the region, inaugurating convoy after convoy of fuel-filled aircraft. drinking water, instant noodles and basic medicines.
They began coordinating the arrival of C-130 foreign airlifters, and police and army officers now line the streets to quell the looting and unrest in the area. following these events.
Nevertheless, locals feel that these efforts are minimal compared to the mammoth task that awaits this community, which can not help but think of its desperate abandonment, after no help whatsoever arrival for nearly six days.
On Wednesday in this region, sign after sign, some hanging on fences and others held by exhausted survivors continue to ask for help: "we are hungry", "do not forget us", we we are also victims. Of those officially declared dead, only about a third were buried, some in mass graves at the top of the hills surrounding the city, and some of the luckiest were found by their family members. others may be dead, buried under the mud.
"We expect this data to continue to change," said Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, spokesman for the Indonesian Disaster Relief Agency, about the balance sheet. Some 70,000 more are now homeless, camped in makeshift shelters made of tarpaulins and bamboo stems.
Foreign aid will begin to flow into the city of Palu, Donggala and the surrounding area. According to Mr. Sutopo, about 29 countries offered their help and 17 of them responded to the specific needs of the Indonesian government. Seven C-130 transports, proposed by four countries, including Singapore and Japan, will travel to the region to airlift survivors, reunite some with families in Palu and carry essential goods. Other countries, such as Australia, have promised doctors and medical equipment.
For the moment, however, medical centers like Undanta Hospital are in disarray and overwhelmed. The hospital entrance was cluttered with oxygen cylinders and hypodermic needles, and patients were lying on stretchers, under the scorching sun, waiting for treatment . In the car park, volunteers and soldiers loaded dozens of corpses wrapped in body bags and tarpaulins in dumpsters to take them to mass burial sites. Inside, an elderly man lay a diaper in his hospital bed, the rice scattered on the thin blue mattress.
Some doctors and nurses wore latex gloves and rubbed their hands with alcohol to burn. Others used gardening gloves, some worked with bare hands and flip flops. When disaster struck for the first time, "nothing was," said Muhammad Sakti, a medical coordinator of the medical team. "We could not work."
Most of the patients were buried under collapsed buildings, the doctors said. Some suffered from open fractures, others had to be amputated. Rescue operations have been prioritized,
The needs are always acute.
"We need fuel," said Sakti, admitting that he was exhausted, "not just for the hospital, but for all of us.We need electricity, water. "
The government, he said, has promised fuel supplies, but for now, "it's only a promise," he added with a laugh.
On Wednesday, Widodo visited Palu, including the now-defunct Petobo settlement, where hundreds of people were still buried under thick mud. He visited the remains of Roa Roa, an 80-room hotel that completely collapsed during the earthquake, burying about 50 or 60 people. His black SUV was flooded by the crowd as he walked away from the site and handed out cookie packets to the kids.
Moments after his departure, Talib, a 24-year-old lifeguard, standing alongside military personnel guarding the area, broke down.
"I was hoping that while Jokowi would be there, all help would come here," he said holding back his tears. He had arrived on the site of the hotel earlier in the day with his own climbing equipment to climb the debris, only one volunteer looking among the rubble. Heavy equipment, he pleaded, must arrive to release people imprisoned inside, even if they are probably dead.
"If it was a member of your family, would not you cry too?" Talib added. "It's the sixth day, brother."
When the soldiers who were present at Jokowi's appearance began to disperse, Talib further reduced the wreckage of the hotel and resumed his search.
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Mahtani reported from Hong Kong. Ainur Rohmah in Jakarta from the Washington Post contributed to this report.
