Victims of the earthquake and tsunami receive medical treatment inside a hospital in Palu, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, October 4, 2018. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha
OCTOBER 4th, 2018
By Patryk Krych | The World Daily
1,424 dead in Indonesia, power restored to Palu
With Friday’s 7.5 magnitude earthquake and tsunami on the west of Sulawesi island having come and past, many have expressed woes as the death toll’s risen to 1,424 on Thursday, and Palu’s population of 370,000 people has been in need of aid and assistance ever since. So far, the one positive that could be expressed about the situation is that power has at last been restored to the city of Palu, allowing better medical help and support to soon take action.
International assistance to look for the missing/survivors is still under way, with power now also contributing to helping in their tasks, but that doesn’t halt the fact that hundreds more may be found dead before all is said and done. With many roads still in ruins, landslides still falling, and communities damaged beyond basic repair, there is still a dire need for more aid and food supplies. Not an easy task, for a wrecked city on the verge of chaos.
Most of the death reports, as expected, are coming up from within the city itself rather than the countryside, due largely to collapsed buildings, and the closer proximity to the beaches. An aid volunteer, who’s been actively assisting in sharing rations with her fellow residents, named Frida Sinta, said; “There are so many challenges with this disaster, it’s never been so bad.”
The most affected areas within Indonesia include around 1.4 million people, with Palu having been struck the worst of course. Already, however, many shops and banks have reopened with the return of power, and many more alongside it, slowly if surely putting a decrease to the mass amounts of looting and theft that had begun to rise in the city.
“We carry whatever we can by car or motorbike within the city wherever we can. But not yet to the most inaccessible places,” Sinta continued, after the arrival of fuel ships refuelling petrol stations, traffic lights returning to working order, and many families planning to temporarily leave the city. In the less accessible districts, however, people have been forced to scavenge fruits such as bananas and coconuts, as rescue workers are still helping to recover.
According to a Reuters photographer, a Red Cross helicopter had landed NorthWest of Palu, close to the town of Donggala, in order to dispense food and water to those in the town. Trips to and from Palu, additionally, may be far easier to make with the recent reopening of the East, West and Southern roads that led to the city, according to national disaster mitigation agency spokesman; Sutopo Purwo Nugroho.
With the return of power comes the return of hope for the people of Palu, but it will still be a great struggle with the city in horrific ruins. Eko Joko, a survivor building a new house near Palu beach on the large collections of debris, has been quoted saying; “We will start again here ourselves because God does not strike twice.”
All around, rescuers have been making use of miniature flags to mark down where they have found dead bodies, for later collection, wanting to concentrate their efforts of locating and extracting the living. District police chief Andi Samsudin Effendy said, as an addition; “We discovered eight bodies with the rescue team but we haven’t been able to bring them out because we don’t have the right equipment.”
On board a marooned ship, Engineer Charles Marlan and his fellow crew members have been eagerly awaiting for the ships owners to decide what to do, with luckily none of them suffering harms or casualties. “What is important is we are alive and for that we should be grateful,” Marlan says.
By Patryk Krych | The World Daily
©2018 THE WORLD DAILY
