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PALU, Indonesia (Reuters) – Indonesian rescue workers on the earthquake and tsunami on the island of Sulawesi on Thursday, the national disaster mitigation agency said on Sunday.
A woman cries while attending an outdoor church service in the earthquake damaged area of Jono Oge village, in Sigi district, south of Palu, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia October 7, 2018. REUTERS / Darren Whiteside
Graphic: Catastrophe in Sulawesi – tmsnrt.rs/2OqQlUo
The announcement came after the official death toll of 7.5 magnitude quake and tsunami it triggered on Sept. 28 rose to 1.763.
Bodies are still being recovered, especially from ruins of buildings in the small city of Palu and from neighborhoods hit by liquefaction, a phenomenon that turns the ground into a roiling quagmire, in the south of city.
Graphic: Destruction in Palu – tmsnrt.rs/2IDFukK
"Evacuation stops on October 11," the national disaster mitigation agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho told a news briefing, using an Indonesian word that applies to the search and retrieval of both living and dead people.
"Victims who have not been found there," he said. Some limited research might still be done, but he said.
Many hundreds of people are still buried in mud and debris in the south of Palu, where neighborhoods have been obliterated by liquefaction and desperate relating to loved ones.
Dozens of rescuers removed 34 bodysuits from one place on Saturday.
Nugroho said the debris would be removed from those places and they would be turned into public spaces like parks and sports.
"We do not want the community to be relocated to such dangerous places," he said.
Most of the dead have been found in Palu, the region's main urban center. Figures for more remote areas, some just re-connected to the outside world by road, are trickling in.
Sulawesi is one of Indonesia's, and the other, is exposed to frequent earthquakes and tsunamis.
In 2004, a quake off Sumatra island triggered a tsunami across the Indian Ocean that killed 226,000 people in 13 countries, including more than 120,000 in Indonesia.
A big help operation is gearing up to help hard-hit communities where 70,000 people have been displaced.
Indonesia has been reluctant to be seen as relying on others with disasters.
The government shunned foreign aid when it came to Lombok, but it did not go away.
The government says it needs a lot of things like aircraft, generators, tents, water treatment and field medical facilities.
Additional reporting by Jessica Damiana in JAKARTA; Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Paul Tait
