Palu, Indonesia—The death toll from a powerful earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia leapt to 832 Sunday, as stunned people on the stricken island of Sulawesi struggled to find food and water and looting spread.
The new toll announced by the national disaster agency was almost double the previous figure. Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla said the final number of dead could be in the “thousands.”
“It feels very tense,” said 35-year-old mother Risa Kusuma, comforting her feverish baby boy at an evacuation center in the gutted coastal city of Palu. “Every minute an ambulance brings in bodies. Clean water is scarce. The mini-markets are looted everywhere.”
Indonesia’s Metro TV on Sunday broadcast footage from a coastal community in Donggala, close to the epicenter of the quake, where some waterfront homes appeared crushed but a resident said most people fled to higher ground after the quake struck.
“When it shook really hard, we all ran up into the hills,” a man identified as Iswan told Metro TV.
In Palu city on Sunday, aid was trickling in, the Indonesian military had been deployed and search-and-rescue workers were doggedly combing the rubble for survivors—looking for as many as 150 people at one upscale hotel alone.
“We managed to pull out a woman alive from the Hotel Roa-Roa last night,” said Muhammad Syaugi, head of the national search and rescue agency. “We even heard people calling for help there yesterday.”
“What we now desperately need is heavy machinery to clear the rubble. I have my staff on the ground, but it’s impossible just to rely on their strength alone to clear this.”
There were also concerns over the whereabouts of hundreds of people who had been preparing for a beach festival when the 7.5-magnitude quake struck Friday, sparking a tsunami that ripped apart the city’s coastline.
A Facebook page was created by worried relatives who posted pictures of still-missing family members in the hopes of finding them alive.
Amid the leveled trees, overturned cars, concertinaed homes and flotsam tossed up to 50 meters inland, survivors and rescuers struggled to come to grips with the scale of the disaster.
Indonesian president Joko Widodo was expected to travel to the region to see the devastation for himself on Sunday.
Hundreds of desperate people in Palu looted supermarkets and gasoline stations Sunday, as an initial trickle of aid into the devastated area failed to relieve an acute shortage of water, food and fuel.
Hordes of residents on Sulawesi island were seen scrambling over broken glass and through broken-down barricades at a supermarket in the center of Palu.
Men and women made off with plastic bin bags and baskets full of biscuits, crisps, nappies, gas canisters, tissue paper and more.
“There has been no aid, we need to eat. We don’t have any other choice, we must get food,” shouted one man.
“We are in a crisis,” cried another.
Two small aftershocks hit while looters marauded through the building, prompting screams of “Earthquake, earthquake.”
But undeterred, more and more mopeds arrived, depositing people in front of the store.
“This situation forced us to do this. We need everything, food, water,” said a group of teenagers. “We took anything we could take. We can’t even cook. So that’s why we looted.”
A handful of vastly outnumbered police officers stood by or looked on from the police station across the road — unable or unwilling to uphold law and order that has quickly melted away.
There was a similar scene at a local gas station where crowds tried to tap underground storage wells for fuel.
“There is only one petrol station that is still operational,” Ray Pratama, a local photographer — who was not involved in the looting — said. “People are desperate.”
They filled up jerrycans, empty soft drink bottles and kitchenware.
“If you sell with reasonable price, that’s okay, but they increase the prices sharply, for basic goods,” said one female looter.
Many Palu residents are still sleeping outside for fear of more aftershocks. Even if they had access to plug sockets, there would be no electricity.
Some aid has started to trickle in to Sulawesi, located in the center of Indonesia’s vast, 17,000-island archipelago.
The government is flying in six field kitchens capable of producing a total of 36,000 rice plates a day and thousands of mattresses, blankets and ready to eat meals.
But it is not coming quick enough for some.
“The shops aren’t open and the markets are empty,” one 33-year-old looter, who only identified himself as Eddy.
“We have to break into all of them one by one.”
On Saturday evening, residents fashioned makeshift bamboo shelters or slept out on dusty playing fields, fearing powerful aftershocks would topple damaged homes and bring yet more carnage.
C-130 military transport aircraft with relief supplies managed to land at the main airport in Palu, which re-opened to humanitarian flights and limited commercial flights, but only to pilots able to land by sight alone.
Satellite imagery provided by regional relief teams showed the severe damage at some of the area’s major sea ports, with large ships tossed on land, quays and bridges trashed and shipping containers thrown around.
Hospitals were overwhelmed by the influx of those injured, with many people being treated in the open air. There were widespread power blackouts.
“We all panicked and ran out of the house” when the quake hit, said Anser Bachmid, a 39-year-old Palu resident. “People here need aid — food, drink, clean water.”
Dramatic video footage captured from the top floor of a parking ramp as the tsunami rolled in showed waves bringing down several buildings and inundating a large mosque.
“I just ran when I saw the waves hitting homes on the coastline,” said Palu resident Rusidanto, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.
About 17,000 people had been evacuated, the government disaster agency said and that number was expected to soar.
“This was a terrifying double disaster,” said Jan Gelfand, a Jakarta-based official at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
“The Indonesian Red Cross is racing to help survivors but we don’t know what they’ll find there.”
Images showed a double-arched yellow bridge had collapsed with its two metal arches twisted as cars bobbed in the water below.
A key access road had been badly damaged and was partially blocked by landslides, the disaster agency said.
Friday’s tremor was also felt in the far south of the island in its largest city Makassar and on neighboring Kalimantan, Indonesia’s portion of Borneo island.
As many as 2.4 million people could have felt the quake, the disaster agency said.
The initial quake struck as evening prayers were about to begin in the world’s biggest Muslim majority country on the holiest day of the week, when mosques are especially busy.
The Philippine government is prepared to help and extend assistance to Indonesia, the Palace said Sunday.
In a statement, Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque offered prayers for the people of Indonesia.
“We join the people of Indonesia in offering our prayers to the hundreds who died after a powerful 7.5 earthquake and tsunami hit Central Sulawesi last Friday,” he said.
“The only Filipino in the area, as per the Department of Foreign Affairs, is safe,” he added, promising to respond and extend assistance to Indonesia.
Indonesia is one of the most disaster-prone nations on earth.
It lies on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, where tectonic plates collide and many of the world’s volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur.
Earlier this year, a series of powerful quakes hit Lombok, killing more than 550 people on the holiday island and neighboring Sumbawa.
Indonesia has been hit by a string of other deadly quakes including a devastating 9.1-magnitude earthquake that struck off the coast of Sumatra in December 2004.
That Boxing Day quake triggered a tsunami that killed 220,000 throughout the region, including 168,000 in Indonesia.
