PALU, Indonesia, Oct 6, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – More bodies were unearthed from
the earthquake-and-tsunami-ravaged Indonesian city of Palu on Saturday, as
authorities move closer to calling off the search for the dead trapped under
flattened communities and declaring them mass graves.
Officials said Saturday the death toll had climbed to 1,649 with more than
a thousand feared still missing in the seaside city on Sulawesi island.
More than 82,000 military and civilian personnel, as well as volunteers,
have descended on the devastated city, where relief groups say clean water
and medical supplies are in short supply.
After days of delays, international aid has slowly begun trickling into
the disaster zone where the UN says almost 200,000 people need humanitarian
assistance.
But hopes of finding anyone alive a full eight days later have all but
faded, as the search for survivors morphs into a grim gathering of the dead.
At the massive Balaroa government housing complex, where the sheer force
of the quake turned the earth temporarily to mush, soldiers wearing masks to
ward off the stench of death clambered over the giant mounds of mud, brick
and cement.
Vast numbers of decomposing bodies could still be buried beneath this
once-thriving neighbourhood, the search and rescue agency said.
Two soldiers who are part of the search emerged from a ditch with a body
bag sagging in the middle but looking too light to be a corpse — they said
they had found the heads of two adults and one child.
“There are no survivors here. We just find bodies, every day,” said
Sergeant Syafaruddin, from an army unit in Makassar south of Palu, who like
many Indonesians goes by one name.
– Health fears –
At the flattened Hotel Roa-Roa — where early optimism that survivors
might be found faded as the days wore on — rescuers reviewed CCTV footage to
get a sense of where the doomed guests could be buried.
In Petobo — another village all but wiped off the map — teams struggled
to extract bodies from the muck, often dislodging limbs loosened by
decomposition after more than a week exposed to the elements.
The search for survivors has not officially been called off.
But security minister Wiranto said the government had been discussing with
local leaders and religious figures as to when the worst-hit areas would be
declared mass graves, and left untouched.
“We have to make a decision as to when the search for the dead will end.
Then, we later must decide when the area will be designated a mass grave,” he
told reporters late Friday.
Concerns are growing that decomposing bodies could pose a ticking time-
bomb for public health.
“Most of the bodies we have found are not intact, and that poses a danger
for the rescuers. We have to be very careful to avoid contamination,” Yusuf
Latif, a spokesman for Indonesia’s search and rescue agency, told AFP from
Palu.
“We have vaccinated our teams, but we need to be extra cautious.”
Thousands of survivors continued to stream out of Palu to nearby cities in
the aftermath of the disaster.
Hospitals remain overstretched and short on staff and supplies.
In Karawana village, nurse Iyong Lamatowa can offer little more than
antibiotics and painkillers to treat those flocking to a makeshift clinic
with badly-infected wounds.
Project HOPE, a medical NGO, said only two of its 82 staff in Palu had
reported for duty since the quake.
“We still don’t know the fate of the clinic doctors, nurses and
technicians who usually staff the clinic,” the organisation said in a
statement.
A floating hospital run by the Indonesian navy and docked in Palu has
already assisted with the delivery of four babies.
One named her child Suharsi, after the ship that helped deliver her baby –
– the KRI Dr Soeharso.
– Short supplies – Survivors have ransacked shops and supply trucks in the
hunt for basic necessities, prompting security forces to round up dozens of
suspected looters and warn that they will open fire on thieves.
Hundreds of people Saturday rushed a truck transporting gas cylinders for
cooking while a supermarket that opened for business under military guard
refused to allow people inside, instead passing goods through the door.
A convoy of five hundred trucks laden with donated food, cooking oil and
other essentials was on its way to Palu, agriculture minister Amran Sulaiman
said in the devastated city on Saturday.
“Palu’s ordeal is grief for all of us and that’s why everyone is lending a
hand to help,” he said.
The United Nations said Friday it was seeking $50.5 million “for immediate
relief” to help victims.
Getting vital supplies to the affected areas has proved hugely
challenging, with the number of flights able to land at Palu’s small airport
still limited, leaving aid workers facing gruelling overland journeys.
Oxfam had sent water treatment units and purification kits to Palu and
Swiss aid teams on the ground were providing drinking water and emergency
shelter, both said in statements Saturday.
Indonesia sits along the world’s most tectonically active region, and its
260 million people are vulnerable to earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic
eruptions.