“It should be done as soon as possible for health and religious reasons,” he said.
Agence France-Presse reported that volunteer gravediggers were ordered to arrange for the burial of 1,300 victims.
Indonesia is majority Muslim, and spiritual customs dictate burial soon after death, often inside a day.
Military and business aircraft delivered aid and supplies to the region. But heavy equipment was urgently needed to achieve people buried in collapsed buildings, including an eight-story hotel in Palu, where voices might be heard from the rubble. The National Search and Rescue Agency reported that a 25-year-old woman was found alive on Sunday evening within the ruins of the Roa-Roa hotel, and published photos of her lying on a stretcher covered with a blanket.
Indonesia’s disaster agency said no less than 832 people had been confirmed dead as of Sunday evening, just about all of them from Palu. The regencies of Donggala, Sigi and Parigi Moutong – with a combined population of 1.2 million – haven’t yet been fully assessed.
Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo visited Palu on Sunday and said rescuers were having difficulty reaching victims as a result of a scarcity of heavy equipment.
“There are many challenges,” Jokowi said. “There are many things we need to do soon, but conditions don’t allow us to do it.”
He said authorities used more heavy equipment so rescuers could help get well more victims on Monday.
Affected areas also needed medical supplies, fuel, fresh water and experts.
It was the most recent natural disaster to hit Indonesia, which is commonly hit by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis as a result of its location within the “Ring of Fire,” an arc of volcanoes and fault lines within the Pacific Basin. In December 2004, a robust 9.1-magnitude earthquake off the coast of the island of Sumatra in western Indonesia triggered a tsunami that killed 230,000 people in greater than a dozen countries. More recently, in August, a large earthquake on the island of Lombok killed 505 people.
In Donggala, the location closest to the earthquake’s epicenter, aerial footage from local television showed some buildings were swept into the ocean, while others in the town were severely damaged, with plywood partitions torn apart and pieces of concrete strewn on the sidewalk. However, a lot of the damage appears to be limited to the waterfront.
Many people were trapped and buried under collapsed houses. There was nothing I could do to assist
Palu, home to greater than 380,000 people, was buried in rubble after the earthquake and tsunami. A heavily damaged mosque was half submerged and a shopping center was reduced to a crumpled hulk. A big yellow arch bridge collapsed.
Residents in a single devastated area of Palu say dozens of individuals should still be buried of their homes.
“The earth rose like a spine and suddenly fell. Many people were trapped and buried under collapsed houses. I could not do anything to assist,” said resident Nur Indah, crying.
“In the evening, a few of them turned on their cell phones to allow them to know they were there. But later and the subsequent day the lights went out.
Indonesia is an enormous archipelago of over 17,000 islands stretching from New York to London. It is home to 260 million people. Roads and infrastructure are poor in lots of areas, making access difficult in the perfect of conditions.
The disaster agency said essential planes could land at Palu airport, although AirNav, which oversees plane navigation, said the runway was cracked and the control tower damaged.
