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PALU, Indonesia – A mass burial of earthquake and tsunami victims was being prepared in a hard-hit city Monday, as the need for heavy equipment to search the victims of the disaster that struck an island in the center of the country. Indonesia three days ago became desperate.
The death toll of more than 800 deaths is largely from the city of Palu and is expected to increase as the areas affected by the damage are reached. The 7.5-magnitude earthquake struck Friday at dusk and spawned a tsunami that would have reached 6 meters (20 feet) in places.
The grave at Palu for 300 victims will measure 10 meters out of 100 and can be expanded if necessary, said Willem Rampangilei, head of the Indonesian Agency for Disaster Reduction.
"It must be done as soon as possible for sanitary and religious reasons," he said. Indonesia is predominantly Muslim and a religious custom requires burials shortly after death, usually in one day.
Military and commercial aircraft were delivering aid and supplies to the area. But there was an urgent need for heavy equipment to reach the survivors buried in collapsed buildings, including an eight-story hotel in Palu where voices were heard in the rubble. A 25-year-old woman was found alive Sunday night in the ruins of the Roa-Roa hotel, according to the National Agency for Search and Rescue (NRS), which released photos of the woman lying on a litter covered with a blanket.
At least 832 people were confirmed dead on Sunday night, said the Indonesian Disaster Relief Agency, almost all from Palu. The regencies of Donggala, Sigi and Parigi Moutong – with a combined population of 1.2 million – have not yet been fully evaluated.
"It is thought that the death toll will increase, because many bodies were still under the rubble, but many have not yet been found," said the spokesman for the disaster agency, Sutopo Purwo Nugroho.
The screams from under the Roa-Roa hotel, which seemed to be overturned with its walls bursting like pickup sticks, went quiet Sunday afternoon. Officials had estimated that about 50 people could be inside.
"We are doing our best, time is so important here to save people," said Muhammad Syaugi, head of the National Search and Rescue Team. "The heavy equipment is on the way."
Metro TV showed a dozen orange combination rescuers climbing on debris with a stretcher carrying the body of a casualty of a modest business hotel.
Other rescuers worked to release a 15-year-old girl, trapped under concrete in her home in Palu, after she collapsed on her family during the earthquake. Unable to move his legs under the debris, Nurul Istikharah was stuck next to his dead mother and niece. Rescuers also tried to control the water from a leaking pipe, fearing it would drown.
Istikharah was unconscious during part of the effort to free her, but rescuers kept talking to her to try to keep her awake. Others offered him food and water.
Indonesian President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo paid a visit to Palu on Sunday and said rescuers were struggling to reach the victims because of a shortage of heavy equipment.
"The challenges are many," said Jokowi. "We have to do a lot of things quickly, but the conditions do not allow us to do that."
He said the authorities were deploying more heavy machinery so rescuers could help recover more casualties on Monday.
The affected areas also needed medical supplies, fuel, fresh water and experts.
This is the last natural disaster to hit Indonesia, which is frequently hit by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis because of its location on the "Ring of Fire", an arch of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific Basin. In December 2004, a major earthquake of magnitude 9.1 off the island of Sumatra, in western Indonesia, triggered a tsunami that killed 230,000 people in a dozen countries. More recently, a powerful earthquake on the island of Lombok killed 505 people in August.
In Donggala, the site closest to the epicenter of the earthquake, aerial footage broadcast on Metro TV showed the soft, blond sand of the beaches swept by the sea, as well as some buildings. Some buildings in the city have been badly damaged, with shredded plywood walls and pieces of concrete scattered on the sidewalk. Much of the damage, however, seemed to be limited to the waterfront.
Palu, which has more than 380,000 inhabitants, was strewn with debris from the earthquake and tsunami. A heavily damaged mosque was half submerged and a shopping center was reduced to a crumpled hulk. A large bridge with yellow arches had collapsed.
The city is built around a narrow bay that apparently would have amplified the strength of the tsunami as the waves surged into the narrow cove. Nugroho, the spokesman for the disaster agency, said the waves would have reached up to 6 meters in some places.
The looters hit a heavily damaged mall, seemingly indifferent to their security amidst the current aftershocks and the dubious stability of the structure.
In a devastated area of Palu, residents said dozens of people could still be buried in their homes.
"The ground rises like a spine and suddenly fell, many people were imprisoned and buried under collapsed houses, I could not do anything to help," said Nur Indah, a resident, crying. . "In the evening, some of them turned on their cell phones just to give a sign that they were there.But the lights were off later and the next day."
With hundreds injured, the hospitals damaged by the earthquake were submerged.
Nugroho said that 61 foreigners were in Palu at the time of the disaster. Most of them were found, but a South Korean would have been trapped at the Roa-Roa hotel, while three others, from France and one from Malaysia, would have disappeared. The survivors were to be evacuated to the city of Makassar, located in the extreme south of the island, in the city of Sulawesi.
Indonesia is a vast archipelago of over 17,000 islands covering a distance from New York to London. It is home to 260 million people. Roads and infrastructure are poor in many areas, making access difficult under the best conditions.
The disaster relief agency said that essential planes could land at Palu airport, although AirNav, which oversees the navigation of the plane, said that the track was cracked and the control tower damaged.
Sulawesi has a history of religious tensions between Muslims and Christians, with violent riots in the city of Poso, not far from Palu, twenty years ago. Indonesia is the most populous Muslim country in the world.
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Associated Press editors Margie Mason in Jakarta, Indonesia, and Stephen Wright in Makassar, Indonesia, contributed to this report.
