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PALU, Indonesia – When rescuers arrived for the first time at Roa Roa Hotel in central Palu, they could still hear the voices of the guests trapped inside, demanding 39, help, after an earthquake had caused the collapse of the eight-storey concrete structure.
But that was days ago.
Now, in much of the distressed city and surrounding areas, there is only silence.
It has been a week since an earthquake of magnitude 7.5 and a tsunami of more than 20 feet devastated the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, killing more than 1,400 people in and around Palu. On Sunday night, the Indonesian search and rescue teams at the Roa Roa hotel were already describing the frightening calm that had fallen on the rubble.
Thursday, as rescuers crisscrossed the most devastated areas of the city, no urgent appeal was launched. It had been days since most rescuers had heard a call for help.
There seemed to be a slight glimmer of hope in the evening of Thursday evening, when the French firefighters organization, which is involved in the rescue and recovery efforts, said its high-tech sensors had "detected the presence of a "victim" inside the four-star Mercure Hotel collapsed from Palu, according to the Associated Press.
But a few hours later, the group could not confirm if a survivor had been found.
In the most devastated neighborhoods, there may have never been any question of asking for help. While buildings are still standing in parts of central Palu, despite the earthquake and tsunami that followed, one neighborhood, Petobo, is a vast sea of twisted debris.
Here the the land became liquid – when the force of the earthquake turned the ground into undulating waves that engulfed houses and warped roads – rescuers are certain they will not find anyone alive. They have been searching for bodies for days. The Indonesian Red Cross described have to dig in the silt as deep as 20 feet in the area.
On what was once the streets of the city, a mixture of mud and rubble is stacked on two floors, with roofs made of rebar and corrugated iron sloping against crumbling concrete pillars.
Iris van Deinze, a spokesperson for the International Committee of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, was traveling with one of the first respondent groups to reach Petobo. "They are discovering devastation and tragedy everywhere," she said. in a report. "When we arrived in Petobo, we found that the map had been erased."
From time to time, a building can still be distinguished – a partially damaged mosque or a three-story house, once home to a wealthy family – oscillating under a strange angle or coming out of the jagged land.
At dawn, before the recovery work begins for the day, everything is quiet and still. But around 9 o'clock Thursday, Petobo was transformed into a sea of activities, with hundreds of rescuers who fell on the neighborhood. They worked with bulldozers to make their way through the area, then broke into small groups and used rudimentary tools such as picks and shovels, or even their hands.
When they approach a body – sometimes signaled by a neighbor or passers-by who smell rotting flesh – they must carefully choose how to release it from surrounding debris.
These recovery efforts are just beginning in some of the most devastated areas, and some areas are still cut – indicating that the death toll could still increase significantly.
At dusk, the sun goes down again and rescuers have to stop work. There are only a few people left who carefully handle the tangled debris to recover all that is available in the rubble. They walk carefully through the inverted barriers and flat roofs that are the only flat surfaces in most of the neighborhood.
Some seek their own property, while others are here to take away everything that they can find.
In the close vicinity of Balaroa, the scenes were essentially the same Wednesday. Rescuers wearing gloves have carefully tried to remove a boy's body from the earth around him. Nearby, rescuers had found the body of a woman holding a small child in her arms.
On Wednesday night, a teenage girl wearing a hijab wore a broken guitar in the rubble, another woman an English grammar book and a group of men shuffling a washing machine.
Yet, only a few tens of meters away from the vast devastation, the houses were intact and cars could easily move in the streets.
Adam Dean has been posted to Palu, Indonesia, and Megan Specia, New York. Hannah Beech and Muktita Suhartono contributed to the Palu report.
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