Rebuilding an Indonesian city devastated by an earthquake and tsunami will take two years, a disaster official said on Thursday, because the seek for victims buried in devastated neighborhoods nears its end.
National disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho told a news conference that official search and rescue operations had been prolonged by in the future and would end on Friday.
“Due to residents’ demands to increase the seek for victims, we prolonged the search and evacuation by in the future,” he said.
Officials are planning prayers in areas corresponding to Balaroa, Petobo and Jono Oge, where the force of the Sept. 28 earthquake liquefied soft soil and destroyed neighborhoods.
Nugroho said reconstruction costs are still being assessed.
“Judging by current conditions, the recovery period will last from 2019 to 2020,” he said. “We expect full economic recovery by 2021.”
The agency said the official death toll rose to 2,073 on Thursday, with a lot of the fatalities occurring in Palu.
Officially, 680 persons are missing, but officials admit the number could also be several thousand because lots of of homes have been sucked into the earth.
An organization affiliated with Save the Children in Indonesia claims that as much as 1,500 children could also be missing.
Selina Sumbung, head of the organization, said the top of the search mission was greeted with a “heavy heart”.
“Children are especially vulnerable in the face of disasters, and the thought that so many of them will never have the chance to grow up is heartbreaking,” she said in a press release.
Central Sulawesi Governor Longki Djanggola said the humanitarian aid period, which ends on Saturday, has been prolonged by two weeks until October 26.
On Thursday, firefighters, soldiers and other personnel searched the rubble in a last-ditch effort to look for victims. They also burned rubble and excavators dug into the tangled stays of buildings.
Heavy equipment was unable to operate in districts where the bottom had turned to mud, hampering the search, and lots of bodies had decomposed beyond recognition as a consequence of the tropical heat.
Kilometers of coastline were devastated by the tsunami that followed the earthquake, with houses swept off their foundations, trucks crushed and various ships washed ashore.
