SULAWESI, Indonesia – Just as millions of people in the world’s biggest Muslim majority country were about to offer their evening prayers on the holiest day of the week, a powerful tremor shook the ground beneath their feet.
On Friday evening, a powerful 7.5 magnitude earthquake rocked the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, with the U.S. Geological Survey saying it was centred at a depth of 6 miles – about 35 miles northeast of the town of Donggala.
The powerful quake came after the same area was struck by a magnitude 6.1 quake earlier the same day, which left one person dead and ten others injured.
The initial quake also caused dozens of houses to collapse.
However, the second quake in a single day caused much larger devastation on the fourth largest Indonesian island – triggering a tsunami that brought waves as high as six metres.
The tsunami ripped apart the coastline of the city of Palu in Sulawesi island, killing dozens of people almost instantly and leaving several others trapped beneath the debris swept up by the deadly waves.
Shocked and devastated, authorities immediately began rescue efforts, with survivors joining in the effort starting from the areas where they were standing.
Shock and sadness multiplied after local authorities in Palu said that dozens of people were trapped beneath the rubble of two hotels and a mall in the city after it was hit by the high waves, immediately after the quake shook the buildings, leading many to collapse.
Indonesia’s National Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said that efforts to restore communication and rescue people trapped under the rubble were on.
Authorities said that Friday’s powerful tremor was also felt in the island’s largest city Makassar, which is far south.
Further, officials reported that the tremor was also felt on Indonesia’s portion of Borneo island, on neighbouring Kalimantan.
On Saturday, the Indonesian government said that the island, which houses about 18 million people, had witnessed the strongest quake this year, that had left 380 people dead and scores of others injured.
Explaining that rescue operations were ongoing, officials pointed out that in many areas, the loss of power and communication had hampered rescue efforts.
Rescue efforts on the island’s worst affected part – Palu were reportedly hampered due to the string of aftershocks that continued, causing the situation to worsen.
Local officials said that the city was facing a major power cut and the main road in the city was blocked due to a landslide.
At the end of the day, Indonesia’s disaster agency said that the toll stood at 384 people dead, about 540 injured, and 29 listed as missing.
Then, on Sunday, causing shockwaves across the world, the Indonesian disaster agency announced that the death toll had risen to 832, more than double the number announced the previous day.
The Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla announced that final casualty could be in the “thousands.”
Causing further pain amongst survivors, authorities were forced to announce mass burials, as they desperately tried to stave off disease.
Meanwhile, local media reports claimed that people on the stricken island of Sulawesi struggled to find food and water, causing looting to spread.
Later on Sunday, Indonesia’s Metro TV broadcast footage from a coastal community in Donggala, which was close to the epicentre of the quake.
A resident quoted in the report by Metro TV said that most people fled to higher ground after the quake struck.
Authorities in Palu said the Indonesian military had been deployed, and search-and-rescue workers were combing the rubble for survivors.
With the roads being cleared for aid to come in, officials said that some teams were engaged in combing the rubble at one upscale hotel, where as many as 150 people were feared trapped.
Further, officials said that a C-130 military transport aircraft with relief supplies managed to land at the main airport in Palu, adding that the airport had re-opened to humanitarian flights and limited commercial flights.
Muhammad Syaugi, head of the national search and rescue agency said in a statement, “We managed to pull out a woman alive from the Hotel Roa-Roa last night. We even heard people calling for help there yesterday (Saturday). What we now desperately need is heavy machinery to clear the rubble. I have my staff on the ground, but it’s impossible just to rely on their strength alone to clear this.”
Regional relief teams later shared some satellite imagery with the media, which showed the severe damage caused at some of the major seaports in the area.
The footage showed large ships tossed on land, quays and bridges trashed and shipping containers strewn around.
Power outages continued in several areas and hospitals across the region were overwhelmed.
Indonesia, the sprawling archipelago that straddles the geological disaster zone in the Pacific called the Ring of Fire, has seismically active tectonic plates.
The series of fragile fault lines that form the Ring of Fire stretch 25,000 miles from New Zealand, across the east coast of Asia through Indonesia, the Philippines and Japan, over to Alaska, Canada and the U.S. West Coast then down to the southern tip of South America.
Overall, the Ring of Fire contains 452 volcanoes and several tectonic plates in the earth’s crust and more than half of the world’s active volcanoes above sea level are part of the ring.
Indonesia sits atop this arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific Basin, which makes the country more prone to frequent seismic and volcanic activity.
The last massive quake to strike Indonesia was a powerful 6.5 magnitude temblor which jolted the western Aceh province, off the northeast coast of Sumatra island in December 2016.
The massive quake killed over 100 people dead, left scores injured and displaced more than 40,000 people.
Before that, in December 2004, a massive magnitude 9.1 earthquake struck off Sumatra triggered a tsunami that killed 230,000 people in over a dozen countries.
Earlier this year, a series of powerful quakes struck the popular tourist island of Lombok, killing over 550 people.
On Sunday, the Indonesian President Joko Widodo was expected to travel to the region to understand the level of devastation caused.
