Indonesia’s president promises to rebuild city hit by earthquake as death toll reaches 90

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesia will rebuild homes and buildings ravaged by a powerful earthquake that struck Sulawesi island last week, President Joko Widodo said on Tuesday, as the death toll reached 90 and thousands more people were displaced.

The 6.2-magnitude earthquake caused significant damage to hundreds of homes, a mall, hospital, hotels and government buildings early on Friday and has been followed by more than 39 aftershocks since.

“Soon the central government will rebuild, then for collapsed houses, the government will help for those that were heavily damaged,” Widodo said as he visited the city of Mamuju earlier on Tuesday.

The Indonesian government will give as much as 50 million rupiah ($3,558.72) for the rebuilding of “heavily damaged” houses, while houses with “medium” and “minor” damages will given up to 25 million rupiah and 10 million rupiah respectively.

“We hope that with the help of the central government, the recovery of collapsed houses, economic recovery, recovery of service processes in government and the bureaucracy will also return to normal,” he said.

Earlier on Tuesday, a military official who is part of the country’s official search and rescue joint forces, said that nearly 10,000 people have been evacuated from Mamuju and the nearby city, Majene.

Many of them have fled to Parepare, a neighboring city more than 250km south of Mamuju and nearly 150km from Majene, the official said.

Straddling the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” Indonesia is regularly hit by earthquakes. In 2018, a 7.5-magnitude quake and subsequent tsunami struck Palu, in Sulawesi, killing thousands.

The country’s meteorology agency has warned of continued aftershocks, and the risk of extreme weather in coming weeks.

Indonesia has faced a string of disasters this month, including a plane crash on Jan. 9 that killed all 62 on board, a flash flood in South Kalimantan on Borneo island that killed at least 15, volcanic eruptions and a deadly landslide that killed 40 in Java.

($1 = 14,050.0000 rupiah)

(Reporting by Heru Asprihanto, Stanley Widianto; Writing by Fathin Ungku; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

Indonesia’s double disaster exposes earthquake lessons not learned

A man salvages wood from the ruins of a house in the Petobo neighbourhood which was hit by an earthquake and liquefaction in Palu, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia October 10, 2018. REUTERS/Darren Whiteside

By Kanupriya Kapoor

PALU, Indonesia (Reuters) – The young man standing atop a mound of gray mud and debris on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, waiting for an excavator he hoped would dig out the bodies of his parents, voiced the exasperation many feel in his earthquake-plagued country.

“This is something that happens all the time in Indonesia. Why aren’t we getting better at handling it?” Bachtiar cried as the machine clanked through the ruins of someone’s kitchen in the city of Palu.

A 7.5-magnitude earthquake on Sept. 28 triggered a tsunami and extensive soil liquefaction, a phenomenon that turns soft soil into a seething mire, killing 2,073 people, according to the latest official estimate. Up to 5,000 more may be missing.

“In every disaster, there’s always a lesson to be learned,” Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, spokesman for the national disaster mitigation agency, said this week.

Nugroho conceded that Indonesia’s preparedness for disasters and capacity to respond still fall woefully short, not least because public funding is so low. He said the country’s disaster response budget is currently 4 trillion rupiah ($262 million) a year, equivalent to 0.002 percent of the state budget.

“We should not forget that there will be many disasters to come. It needs budget,” he said. “We need to learn from Japan as they are consistent in preparation.”

Critics say that, despite improvements at a national level in disaster management since a devastating Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, local authorities often lack know-how and equipment, and so rescue efforts are delayed until the military can reach the area.

Also, a lack of education and safety drills means people don’t know how to protect themselves when an earthquake strikes.

Palu was Indonesia’s second earthquake disaster of 2018. In August, the island of Lombok was rocked by quakes that flattened villages and killed more than 500 people.

It was also only the latest in a string of deadly tsunamis to hit the archipelago in 2005, 2006 and 2010. But none of those compare with the 2004 tsunami that killed some 226,000 people in 13 countries, more than 120,000 of them in Indonesia alone.

Indonesia straddles the southwestern reaches of the Pacific Ring of Fire and is practically defined by the tectonic plates that grind below its lush islands and blue seas.

The archipelago is strung out along a fault line under the Indian Ocean off its west coast. Others run northwards in the Western Pacific, including those under Sulawesi.

Volcanoes that dot the islands have brought fiery destruction and remarkable fertility, but rapid population growth over recent decades means that many more people are now living in hazardous areas.

For a graphic on destruction in Palu, click https://tmsnrt.rs/2IDFukK

‘NEW SCIENCE’

The biggest – and most unexpected – killer in Sulawesi was soil liquefaction, a phenomenon where intense tremors cause saturated sand and silt to take on the characteristics of a liquid.

The liquefaction swallowed up entire neighborhoods of Palu.

With communications and power down, rescuers focused first on Palu’s tsunami-battered beachfront in the north and on collapsed hotels and shopping centers in its business district.

Roads to the south, where the city has spread out as it has grown, were initially impassable – damaged or blocked by debris.

So it took days for rescuers to reach the neighborhoods of Balaroa, Petobo, and Sigi, where traumatized survivors said the ground came alive when the quake hit, swallowing up people, vehicles and thousands of homes.

Liquefaction is a fairly common characteristic of high-magnitude earthquakes, but the Indonesian government says there is still insufficient understanding of the phenomenon and how to reduce exposure to it.

“Liquefaction is a new science. There are no guidelines on how to handle it,” Antonius Ratdomopurbo, secretary of the Geological Agency at the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, told reporters this week.

‘EDUCATION’

A tsunami warning system set up after 2004 failed to save lives in Sulawesi: it emerged too late that, due to neglect or vandalism, a network of 22 buoys connected to seabed sensors had been inoperable since 2012.

With power and communications knocked out in Palu, there was no hope of warning people through text messages or sirens that tsunami waves of up to six meters (20 feet) were racing towards the city.

But that highlights what some experts say is the most important lesson: No one in a coastal area should wait for a warning if they feel a big quake.

“The earthquake is the warning,” said Adam Switzer, a tsunami expert at the Earth Observatory of Singapore. “It’s about education.”

Unlike in quake-prone Japan and New Zealand, earthquake education and drills are only sporadic in Indonesia, so there is little public awareness of how to respond.

“The problem in tsunami early warning systems is not the structure … but the culture in our communities,” said Nugroho.

That culture includes a resilience that emerged within days as the people of Palu picked up the pieces of their lives.

“Palu is not dead,” is daubed on a billboard by the beach.

Eko Joko, his wife and two children have been salvaging wood and metal to reconstruct their flattened beachfront shop-house.

“I tell my family they have to be strong, not scared so that I can be strong,” said Joko, 41.

“This disaster has not destroyed us.”

(Additional reporting by Bernadette Christina Munthe in Jakarta; Editing by Robert Birsel and John Chalmers)

Anger, dismay as Indonesia says search for quake victims to end

People attend an outdoor church service in the earthquake damaged area of Jono oge village, in Sigi district, south of Palu, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia October 7, 2018. REUTERS/Darren Whiteside

By Kanupriya Kapoor and Fathin Ungku

PALU, Indonesia (Reuters) – Relatives of hundreds of people missing after an earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia reacted with anger, sadness and resignation on Sunday to a decision by the state disaster agency to end searches for bodies later this week.

The 7.5 magnitude quake on Sept. 28 brought down shopping malls, hotels and other buildings in the city of Palu, while tsunami waves smashed into its beachfront. But perhaps more deadly was soil liquefaction which obliterated several Palu neighborhoods.

No one knows how many people are missing but it is at least in the hundreds, rescuers say.

The official death toll has risen to 1,763 but bodies are still being recovered, at least 34 in one place alone on Saturday and more on Sunday.

“Many of us are angry that we haven’t found our families and friends and they want to give up?” said Hajah Ikaya, 60, who says she lost her sister, brother-in-law and niece in the Balaroa neighborhood in the south of the city. They are all missing.

Balaroa was one of areas particularly hard hit by liquefaction, which turns the ground into a roiling quagmire, destroying houses and dragging people under the mud and debris.

The disaster agency said earlier liquefaction destroyed 1,700 houses in one neighborhood alone with hundreds of people buried in the mud.

“We’re Muslim. We need a proper burial, in the Islamic way,” said Ikaya. “We don’t want this.”

Disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho told a briefing in Jakarta some limited searching might continue but large-scale searches with many personnel and heavy equipment would cease on Oct. 11.

Debris would be cleared and areas hit by liquefaction would be turned into parks and sports venues. Surveys would be carried out and people living in vulnerable places would be moved.

“We don’t want the community to be relocated to such dangerous places,” Nugroho said.

Most of the dead from the quake and tsunami were in Palu, the region’s main urban center. Figures for more remote areas are trickling in but they seem to have suffered fewer deaths than the city.

Dede Diman, 25, a resident of Petobo, another neighborhood in Palu that was laid waste by liquefaction, said rescuers hadn’t even started searching where his sister was lost.

“We’re already angry,” said Diman, who is living in a shelter with his brother and another sister. Their mother was killed and her body found.

“We don’t agree with giving up. Even if they give up, we won’t. We want to find our sister.”

Graphic: Catastrophe in Sulawesi – https://tmsnrt.rs/2OqQlUo

PRAYERS

Mohammad Irfan, 25, got home to Palu on Sunday, as air services picked up, from his job on Bali island, to help search for his missing grandfather.

“I’d feel very sad if the search mission ends because there are so many still missing and buried,” he said.

A grieving father was resigned to the search ending without his two-year-old daughter being found.

“What’s the point anyway? At this stage, they’re not even recognizable,” said Ondre, 38, who makes toys for a living.

Villagers affected by the earthquake wave after an Indonesian military helicopter dropped aid in Lindu village south of Palu, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, October 7, 2018. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha

Villagers affected by the earthquake wave after an Indonesian military helicopter dropped aid in Lindu village south of Palu, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, October 7, 2018. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha

His wife and two daughters were swept away in the tsunami that hit Palu’s seafront after the earthquake. He found the bodies of his wife and older daughter but is still looking for his younger daughter.

“I don’t want her to feel like her father never tried to find her. My soul wouldn’t rest,” he said by a mass grave atop a hill overlooking Palu’s bay as the sun set, where he had come to offer prayers.

Sulawesi is one of Indonesia’s five main islands. The archipelago sees frequent earthquakes and occasional tsunami.

In 2004, a quake off Sumatra island triggered a tsunami across the Indian Ocean that killed 226,000 people in 13 countries, including more than 120,000 in Indonesia.

Earlier on Sunday, dozens of Christians gathered outside ruined churches for services to give thanks for their survival and to mourn members of their congregation killed in the disaster.

Indonesia has the world’s biggest Muslim population but there are Christian communities throughout the archipelago, including in Palu.

“We are so relieved to be alive but sad because so many of our congregation died,” said Dewi Febriani, 26, after a service in a tent outside the Toraja Church in Jono Oge village, south of Palu.

Jono Oge was hit hard by liquefaction with dozens of teenagers at a nearby church and Bible camp killed. Many of lie buried in the mud.

(Additional reporting by Jessica Damiana in JAKARTA, Rozanna Latiff in PALU; Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Engineer grateful to be alive after tsunami beaches his 500-tonne ship

FILE PHOTO: The KM Sabuk Nusantara 39 ship is seen stranded on the shore after the earthquake and tsunami hit an area in Wani, Donggala, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia October 3, 2018. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha/File Photo

By Kanupriya Kapoor and Tom Allard

WANI, Indonesia (Reuters) – Ship’s engineer Charles Marlan had the unsettling sensation his vessel was being sucked out to sea, the telltale sign of an imminent tsunami, just minutes after a major earthquake struck the Indonesian island of Sulawesi on Friday.

His passenger and cargo vessel, the 500-tonne KM Sabuk Nusantara 39, was docked in Wani, east of the city of Palu, which suffered the brunt of the disaster.

“The whole ship was shaking, everything in our bunks started falling,” Marlan said.

The ship was picked up by the tsunami rushing in from the sea and slammed onto land, crashing into a dockside settlement.

And that’s where it lies, high and dry, nearly a week after the earthquake and tsunami devastated the area, killing at least 1,424 people.

Marlan and his fellow crewmen knew they were in trouble when they felt the ship being pulled back out to sea from the dock, as the sea receded, heralding the arrival of a tsunami.

They had no sooner scrambled into life jackets when a five-meter wave bore down on them.

“I could hear the waves coming,” Marlan said, describing how he was gripped by fear.

“The waves carried us very fast and before we knew it, we were sitting on land,” he said in an interview aboard the ship, which sits balanced precariously, its propeller and rudder exposed, hanging dusty meters above the ground.

FILE PHOTO: The KM Sabuk Nusantara 39 ship is seen stranded on the shore after the earthquake and tsunami hit an area in Wani, Donggala, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia October 3, 2018. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha/File Photo

FILE PHOTO: The KM Sabuk Nusantara 39 ship is seen stranded on the shore after the earthquake and tsunami hit an area in Wani, Donggala, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia October 3, 2018. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha/File Photo

No one on the boat was hurt.

Now Marlan and 20 crewmen are stranded, awaiting a decision on what should be done from the national ferry operator, which owns the vessel.

They survive on handouts from passing ferries and while away the time, attending a roll-call every now and then and chatting with neighborhood kids who climb up on board.

Marlan said he was thankful his ship had not killed anyone when it was hurled onto the land, as far as they knew.

“What is important is we are alive and for that we should be grateful.”

(Editing by Robert Birsel and Nick Macfie)

Tsunami hits small city on Indonesia’s Sulawesi after quake: officials

A paramedic gives treatment to an earthquake survivor outside a hospital in Donggala, Indonesia Sulawesi Island, September 28, 2018. Antara Foto/HO/BNPB-Sutopo Purwo N via REUTERS

By Tabita Diela and Gayatri Suroyo

JAKARTA (Reuters) – A tsunami of up to two meters hit a small city on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi after a major 7.5 quake struck offshore on Friday, collapsing buildings and washing a vessel ashore, but there was no word on casualties, officials said.

Authorities received information that Palu had been hit, said Dwikorita Karnawati, who heads Indonesia’s meteorology and geophysics agency, BMKG, amid a rapid series of aftershocks.

“The 1.5- to two-meter tsunami has receded,” Karnawati told Reuters. “It ended. The situation is chaotic, people are running on the streets and buildings collapsed. There is a ship washed ashore,” she added.

BMKG had earlier issued a tsunami warning, but lifted it within the hour.

Amateur footage shown by local TV stations, which could not immediately be confirmed by Reuters, showed waters crashing into houses along Palu’s shoreline.

The national search and rescue agency will deploy a large ship and helicopters to aid with the operation, said agency chief Muhammad Syaugi, adding that he had not been able to contact his team in Palu.

Palu, hit by a 6.2 magnitude quake in 2005 which killed one person, is a tourist resort at the end of a narrow bay famous for its beaches and water sports.

In 2004, an earthquake off the northern Indonesian island of Sumatra triggered a tsunami across the Indian Ocean, killing 226,000 people in 13 countries, including more than 120,000 in Indonesia.

Earlier on Friday, the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) said it was having difficulty reaching some authorities in Palu and the fishing town of Donggala, closest to the epicenter of the quake 80 km (50 miles) away at a shallow 10 km underground.

Palu airport was closed.

The area was hit by a lighter quake earlier in the day, which destroyed some houses, killing one person and injuring at least 10 in Donggala, authorities said.

Some people took to Twitter saying they could not contact loved ones. “My family in Palu is unreachable,” Twitter user @noyvionella said.

The U.S. Geological Survey put the magnitude of the second quake at a strong 7.5, after first saying it was 7.7.

More than 600,000 people live in Donggala and Palu.

“The (second) quake was felt very strongly, we expect more damage and more victims,” Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, BNPB spokesman said.

Indonesia sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire and is regularly hit by earthquakes.

A series of earthquakes in July and August killed nearly 500 people on the holiday island of Lombok, hundreds of kilometers southwest of Sulawesi.

(Reporting by Jakarta newsroom; Editing by Nick Macfie)