Terrified residents in the quake-struck Indonesian city of Palu fashioned makeshift bamboo shelters or slept out on dusty playing fields Saturday fearing powerful aftershockswould topple damaged homes and bring yet more carnage and suffering.
Thirty-five-year-old mum Risa Kusuma — her world upended Friday by the one-two punch of a 7.5 magnitude earthquake and a tsunami that climbed up to 1.5 metres in height — camped in her back garden and looked to God for some semblance of protection.
“Please pray for us,” she told AFP. “Hopefully, Allah will protect me, my children, my husband, family and the people of Palu.”
As rescue workers struggled to reach remote areas and the vast machinery of the international recovery effort geared up, the challenges for Kusuma and other residents of this small seaside city of around 350,000, were basic and immediate: Food. Water. Shelter.
Large queues formed as citizens waited in the tropical heat for life-giving water, and the basic sustenance of instant noodles.
Essential supplies have been constricted by a tsunami that mowed down shops, overturned cars and ripped up parts of a coastal road in central Sulawesi.
The wave pushed a tangled mess of corrugated steel roofing, timber, rubble and flotsam some 50 metres inland. Elsewhere it uprooted trees and downed powerlines.
Some 24 hours after the quake hit, the city centre was a mix of collapsed and damaged buildings, shuttered shops and cracked roads.
On a main thoroughfare, crowds of residents-turned-looters used lengths of garden hose to siphon petrol from underground tanks at an abandoned petrol station.
Anser Bachmid, a 39-year-old father of one, told AFP the need was acute. “The public here need aid — food, drink, clean water,” he said.
“We don’t know what to eat for dinner today,” he said, in a morbid echo of a discussion held every evening by families the world over.
As night fell, the city was plunged into enveloping darkness, because of a city-wide power outage which has also widely affected cellphone reception.
Just outside the city, families huddled under makeshift shelters built out of salvaged bamboo, tree branches and tarpaulins. Some cooked on open fires and hundreds took up residence on a football field.
But many in Palu have decided to leave. A steady crowd of trucks, cars and motorcycles — weighed down with belongings — could be seen streaming out of the city.
Routes in and out of the city have fallen victim to landslides triggered by the quake, reducing roads in some parts to single lanes barely wide enough for a car to pass.
For many residents trapped in this battle for survival, there is the added pain of scouring the rubble, the detritus and the hospitals for loved ones. AFP
