Tsunami kills hundreds in Indonesia

At least 1,203 people died after Friday’s 7.7-magnitude quake and resulting tsunami, said Indonesia’s disaster management agency on Saturday, cited by Indonesian television.

A young woman was pulled alive from the rubble of the Roa Roa Hotel, the news website Detik.com reported. Hundreds of people gathered at the wrecked eight-storey Tatura Mall searching for loved ones.

He said authorities had received little word of what happened in the Donggala area near the epicenter of the quake, where almost 300,000 people live. At least 832 people lost their lives, the country’s disaster agency said on Sunday, but the government fears that the actual death toll might be in the thousands.

Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo said yesterday that he instructed the security minister to coordinate the government’s response to the disaster.

“Many bodies were found along the shoreline because of the tsunami, but the numbers are still unknown”. The region has experience 209 aftershocks and serious damage to the airport, roads, communications and other important infrastructure.

About 10,000 displaced people were scattered at 50 different places in Palu, he said.

“Thank you very much for the offer to help us”, Indonesian Economic and Trade Office to Taipei Representative Didi Sumedi said on the sidelines of an Indonesian cultural event in New Taipei City. Communication is still down, power is still out. “We don’t know for sure what is the impact”, he said.

More than 400 people were badly injured, Sutopo said.

The Ministry of Transportation confirmed that Taipa Port and the Mamboro Bus Terminal in Palu were also badly damaged. A correspondent for a local newspaper said on his Facebook page that at least three other hotels with guests in it have also collapsed.

Antara Foto Agency / Reuters People line up for fuel at a gas station on Sunday in this photo taken by Antara Foto.

“People here need aid – food, drink, clean water”, he added.

A man stands amid the damage caused by a tsunami in Palu, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia.

The agency on Saturday was widely criticised for not informing that a tsunami had hit Palu, though officials said waves had come within the time the warning was issued. However, the tsunami caused a power outage in Palu, snapping its communication lines and making collection of information hard.

“This was a terrifying double disaster”, said Jan Gelfand, a Jakarta-based official at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

“We tried to find shelter, but then I heard people shouting, ‘Water!”

In the nearby city of Donggala, home to almost 300,000 people, a large bridge with yellow arches that spanned a coastal river collapsed.

Dozens of corpses lay in an open courtyard at the back of a Palu hospital, baking under a fierce tropical sun, with only one building separating it from an open triage site on the opposite side.

Medical team members help patients outside a hospital after an natural disaster and a tsunami hit Palu, on Sulawesi island.

“We all panicked and ran out of the house” when the quake hit, said Anser Bachmid, a 39-year-old Palu resident.

The majority of Palu’s inhabitants are Muslim.

Indonesia is one of the world’s most disaster-prone nations.

Indonesia, which sits on the seismically active Pacific Ring of Fire, is all too familiar with deadly earthquakes and tsunamis.

The 7.5 magnitude tremor later on was more powerful than a series of quakes that killed hundreds on the Indonesian island of Lombok in July and August.

People from France, South Korea and Malaysia were missing, while foreigners who have been or are to be evacuated from the quake-hit areas include those from China, Germany, Singapore, Belgium, Vietnam and Thailand, Nugroho said.

Injured people are treated outside at Army hospital following earthquakes and a tsunami in Palu, Central Sulawesi.