Hossen Sohel
Indonesian volunteers dug mass graves for more than 1,000 bodies yesterday after a quake and tsunami devastated swathes of Sulawesi, as authorities – struggling to deal with the sheer scale of the disaster – appealed for international help, reports AFP, Reuters.
Indonesia is no stranger to natural calamities and Jakarta wanted to show that it was able to deal with a catastrophe that has killed at least 832 people so far according to the official toll.
But four days on some remote areas have yet to be contacted, medicines are running out and rescuers are struggling with a shortage of heavy equipment to reach desperate victims calling out from the ruins of collapsed buildings.
President Joko Widodo, said: “The evacuation is not finished yet, there are many places where the evacuation couldn’t be done because of the absence of heavy equipment, but last night equipment started to arrive.”
“We’ll send as much food supplies as possible today with Hercules planes, directly from Jakarta,” he said, referring to C-130 military transport aircraft.
Of particular concern is Donggala, a region of 300,000 people north of Palu and close to the epicenter of the quake, and two other districts, where communication had been cut off.
The four districts have a combined population of about 1.4 million.
Aid worker Lian Gogali, who had reached Donggala district by motorcycle, said hundreds of people facing a lack of food and medicine were trying to get out, but evacuation teams had yet to arrive and roads were blocked.
Indonesia, home to 260 million people, is one of the world’s most disaster-prone nations.
It lies on the Pacific “Ring of Fire“, where tectonic plates collide and many of the world’s volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur.
A massive 2004 quake triggered a tsunami that killed 220,000 throughout the region, including 168,000 in Indonesia.