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Search called off in Indonesian quake-tsunami: official
PALU, Indonesia, Oct 11, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – The search for those killed in
Indonesia’s quake-tsunami disaster was called off Thursday, despite there
being around 5,000 people still missing.
The magnitude 7.5-quake and a subsequent tsunami razed whole swathes of
Palu to the ground on September 28.
More than 2,000 bodies have been recovered since the twin disaster on
Sulawesi island.
But authorities fear 5,000 more could be buried beneath the ruined city,
where entire villages were swallowed. Rescuers had struggled to find remains
in the twisted wreckage, a job made worse as mud hardened and bodies
decomposed in the tropical heat.
“The search and rescue (SAR) operation for the victims will end this
Thursday afternoon,” SAR field director in Palu, Bambang Suryo, told AFP.
The government earlier indicated these hard-hit areas would be left
untouched as mass graves.
Parks and monuments are planned at three of these worst-hit areas —
Balaroa, Petobo and Jono Oge — to commemorate the possibly thousands of dead
who will never found.
Those zones were all but destroyed by liquefaction, a phenomenon where the
brute force of a quake turns soil to quicksand.
Humanitarian assistance has poured into the disaster-ravaged city but the
recovery ever been criticised as moving too slowly.
Some foreign rescue teams were prevented from deploying quickly to the
ground to assist in the search for the dead and missing.
The UN says 200,000 people are in dire need of humanitarian assistance in
Palu, with clean drinking water and medical supplies still in short supply.
An estimated 80,000 people were displaced by the disaster, many squatting
in tents outside their destroyed homes.
BSS/AFP/IJ/1313 hrs