Nearly a week after Indonesia quake, hope fades for missing

PALU, Indonesia – In the midday heat of the stifling, she wakes up in the skin. But all Anisa Cornelia could think about the love of her life – the man was supposed to marry this month.

She had not seen a deadly tsunami in the last day of the week.

"Where is my fiance? Please, do you have any news? "The badly bruised 22-year-old pleaded as medical staff came to check in the courtyard of Palu's main hospital.

"Everyone is still searching for him," Dr. Andi Sengrengrele said, "Pursuing her lips in sympathy. "You have to be patient, OK?"

One week after a magnitude of 7.5 Sulawesi, deadly tsunami on the island of Sulawesi, countless people and their loved ones – both survivors and the dead.

As of Thursday, 1.424, with 113 people missing. Many families, though, never registered their losses with police, while others failed to identify them before they were buried anonymously in mass graves.

Lisda Cancer, who heads the local police's Department of Victim Identification, said about 600 of the bodies buried in Palu were unclaimed. Until Wednesday, the authorities had been photographing them in hopes that they could identify them later.

"But we had to stop because of the body we're recovering now have decayed too much," said Cancer. "They've become public health hazard, and the new instructions are burying them immediately."

The disaster has overwhelmed local authorities. On Thursday, a private ambulance has been found to be one of the hospitals, including the one where Cornelia was being treated. Both facilities turned them away.

Before the vehicle drove away, a woman in a red headscarf who had been searching for a missing daughter for a week began weeping. Hospital staff said they had received their body, but had released it for burial already in one of Palu's mass graves.

Cornelia said she puts her fiancé, 25-year-old Iqbal Nurdiansyah, seven years earlier through friends at school. She was attracted to his warm personality, his bushy eyebrows and his handsome face.

Three years ago, he went to his favorite restaurant, on Palu Bay, and proposed. A two-week wedding ceremony was set to begin Oct. 15, culminating in a reception at a hotel called the Swiss Bell, which also overlooked the beach.

On Sept. 28, the couple was walking along the sandy shore after an early dinner with eight members of Nurdiansyah's family. Nurdiansyah how beautiful the sunset was, and he organized a group photo.

Then, suddenly, the ground shook under their feet.

People who had been playing volleyball and relaxing in the cafes along the shore, screaming, "Earthquake! Earthquake! "

As terrifying as the tremor was, Cornelia and her husband-to-be thought they had escaped the disaster unharmed.

Shortly afterward, though, she heard a roar and turned to see a huge wave rushing toward them – the largest she had ever seen in her life. All of them started to run. The last time she saw Nurdiansyah, he was trying to scoop up two of his young nieces to save them.

Cornelia, who could not swim, swallowed salt water as she was sucked beneath the powerful wave and flipped upside down, "left and right, like a spinning ball."

Miraculously, she was still somewhere on the beach, largely unscathed and able to stand up. But then a second wave struck, this one lower and much faster. Inland, shredding of the body – head to toe – among smashed blocks of concrete, broken wooden planks and swirling garbage.

When the water finally begins to retreat, she finds herself alone – pinned between a metal fence and the stage of a soccer field. A man helped her up in the darkness, she had been thrown onto piles of debris and had been ripped off by the waves.

Of the nine others who had been known to have survived a 5-year-old niece of Nurdiansyah. Two others have been confirmed dead, while six are still missing.

At the hospital Thursday, Cornelia's 44-year-old mother, Ray Djangaritu, tried to console her.

Friends had looked for hospitals without luck, but it was taken to another city. Cellphone networks have been down or limited for much of the week, making it hard to communicate. "I believe he's still alive," she said.

Tears seeping from her eyes, Cornelia held onto that hope.

"I still want to marry him, even if God returns with a disability, no hands or blindness," she said. "I can see for him, as long as I am healthy."

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Associated Press journalist Andi Jatmiko contributed.

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