Indonesia earthquake death toll rises to nearly 1350

Four days after the quake and tsunami hit the Indonesian city of Palu, this devastated neighborhood has received no government help and anger is simmering among its residents.

Among those killed in the area were 34 children at a Christian bible study camp, a Red Cross official said. Efforts have focused on the Roa-Roa hotel, an eight-story building in Palu where relief workers briefly heard voices coming from beneath the rubble on Saturday. Queues for fuel, which has nearly run out in the area, were miles long and the national police and troops were deployed to guard petrol stations and food shops. “We continue our search and rescue work”, he added.

Indonesia is all too familiar with earthquakes and tsunamis, Reuters noted.

The bo‌‌die‌s of 1,203 v‌icti‌m‌s claimed by the catastrophic tsu‌na‌m‌i and quake have been stacked side-by-side and covered in dirt and rubble in a 100-meter (328-foot) m‌ass g‌ra‌ve‌ in Indonesia. As per the reports, most of the people have died belonged to the city of Palu.

“We’re strengthening our team in Makassar to respond to this and we’re also sending a team in from Jakarta”, says Yohanes Baskoro, programme manager with Caritas Indonesia, locally known as KARINA.

The vast archipelago is home to 260 million people on more than 17,000 islands that stretch a distance similar to that between NY and London.

“The evacuees are now taking shelter in 109 places in the province”. To ensure relief funds in the state of emergency, an amount of $37.6 million has been set aside.

Almost 62,000 people have been displaced from their homes, Nugroho said.

Meanwhile, many regions remain at a standstill.

Residents return to their collapsed homes to salvage belongings in Palu, Indonesia’s Central Sulawesi on October 1, 2018, after an natural disaster and tsunami hit the area on September 28.

“The city of Palu has been devastated and first reports out of Donggala indicate that it has also been hit extremely hard”. Palu has suffered enormous damage and gas stations too have been harmed. Some survivors outside of Palu are intercepting aid trucks to plunder supplies and other essentials as aid begins to trickle in, according to the Post.

The body of a tsunami victim is taken to a mass burial site in Palu, Sulawesi, on Monday.

But there are fears many more are buried in mud and trapped under buildings in remote areas that have not yet been accessed.

Today, newly arrived rescue teams were confronting the behemoth task of trying to dig them out.

At least 844 people have been confirmed dead, but officials expect that number to rise as rescuers reach towns and villages cut off since the disaster struck on Friday evening. The quake’s dozens of aftershocks further devastated the region in the following hours.

A auto sits wedged into a building in Palu.

Many people grabbed diapers while one man clutched a rice cooker as he headed for the door. “This is already a tragedy, but it could get much worse”.