CIANJUR, Indonesia — More rescuers and volunteers were deployed Wednesday in devastated areas on Indonesia’s important island of Java to go looking for the dead and missing from an earthquake that killed at the least 268 people.
With many missing, some distant areas still unreachable and greater than 1,000 people injured within the 5.6 magnitude quake, the death toll was more likely to rise. Hospitals near the epicenter on the densely populated island were already overwhelmed, and patients attached to IV drips lay on stretchers and cots in tents arrange outside, awaiting further treatment.
Greater than 12,000 army personel were deployed Wednesday to extend the strength of search efforts that being carried out by greater than 2,000 joint forces of police, the search and rescue agency and volunteers, said Suharyanto, the National Disaster Mitigation Agency chief.
Suharyanto, who like many Indonesians uses just one name, said aid was reaching hundreds of individuals left homeless who fled to temporary shelters where supplies may be distributed only by foot over the rough terrain.
Television reports showed police, soldiers and other rescue personnel using jackhammers, circular saws and sometimes their bare hands and farm tools, digging desperately within the worst-hit area of Cijendil village where tons of mud, rocks and trees were left from a landslide.
A whole bunch of police, soldiers and residents dug through the debris with their bare hands, shovels and hoes as heavy rain hindered their efforts.
By Wednesday morning, the federal government seemed to be focused on finding bodies, and wherever possible, survivors. Authorities struggled to bring tractors and other heavy equipment over washed-out roads after earthquake triggered landslides crashing onto the hilly hamlets.
But still, residents said the federal government was slow to answer the earthquake.
Muhammad Tohir, 48, was sitting in his lounge with family in Cijendil when the catastrophe struck. Although his family managed to make it out, his sister and her two children was crushed by a landslide, a number of kilometers (miles) of his house.
“After I got here to my sister’s house, I used to be devastated by what I saw,” Tohir said, “Dozens of homes had been buried by landslides… I feel like doomsday.”
He said greater than 40 houses in his sister’s neighborhood in Cijendil buried under tons of mud with at the least 45 people were buried alive, including Tohir’s sister and her two children.
Tohir, together with other residents in the world, looked for the missing using farm tools and managed to drag out two bodies buried under as much as 6 meters (10 feet) of mud. Two days later, rescue personnel arrived to assist in the search.
“The federal government too slow to answer this disaster,” Tohir said. “They needs to be bringing in heavy equipment to hurry this up,” he said.
But he said that he is not going to quit until they’ll pull his sister and his nieces out of the mud.
In several hard-hit areas, water in addition to food and medical supplies were being distributed from trucks, and authorities have deployed military personnel carrying food, medicine, blankets, field tents and water tankers.
Volunteers and rescue personnel erected more temporary shelters for those left homeless in several villages of Cianjur district.
Most were barely protected by makeshift shelters that were lashed by heavy monsoon downpours. Only a number of were lucky to be protected by tarpaulin-covered tents. They said they were running low on food, blankets and other aid, as emergency supplies were rushed to the region.
Suharyanto said greater than 58,000 survivors were moved to shelters and 1,083 people were injured, with nearly 600 of them still receiving treatment for serious injuries.
He said rescuers had recovered 268 bodies from collapsed houses and landslides that triggered by the earthquake, and at the least 151 still reported missing. But not the entire dead have been identified, so it’s possible some the bodies pulled from the rubble are of individuals on the missing list.
Rescue operations were focused on a few dozen villages in Cianjur, where persons are still believed trapped, Suharyanto said.
In a virtual news conference on Tuesday evening, Suharyanto said that greater than 22,000 houses in Cianjur were damaged and the agency was still collecting data on damaged houses and buildings within the town.
Indonesia is ceaselessly hit by earthquakes, many much stronger than Monday’s whose magnitude would typically be expected to cause light damage. But the world is densely populated, and experts said the self-love of the quake and inadequate infrastructure contributed to the severe damage, including caved-in roofs and huge piles of bricks, concrete, and corrugated metal.
The quake was centered on the agricultural, mountainous Cianjur district, where one woman said her home began “shaking prefer it was dancing.”
Greater than 2.5 million people live in Cianjur district, including about 175,000 within the important town of the identical name.
Most of the dead were public school students who had finished their classes for the day and were taking extra lessons at Islamic schools when the buildings collapsed, West Java Gov. Ridwan Kamil said.
President Joko Widodo visited Cianjur on Tuesday and pledged to rebuild infrastructure and to supply government assistance as much as 50 million rupiah ($3,180) to every resident whose house was damaged.
The country of greater than 270 million people is ceaselessly struck by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis due to its location on the arc of volcanoes and fault lines within the Pacific Basin generally known as the “Ring of Fire.”