Rescuers used their bare hands and shovels yesterday to pry muddy corpses from Indonesian villages devastated by landslides, as flooding blocked heavy equipment from reaching a disaster zone where at least 87 people were killed or feared dead.
Tens of thousands of villagers have been forced from their homes after torrential rain sent hillsides crashing into central districts of Java island on Wednesday and caused swollen rivers to break their banks.
Soldiers, police and villagers have worked around the clock -- often lashed by seasonal downpours -- but the grim task of recovering bodies has taken days.
More than 1,000 rescue workers resumed the search for bodies for a third day in Central Java's worst-hit Karanganyar district, still mainly using their hands and basic equipment, officials said.
"We have intensified the search today [Friday] by deploying more rescuers who started their work today at 5am," said Heru Aji Pratomo, the head of the local disaster management center.
Six more bodies were retrieved from the gnarled wreckage yesterday, he said, bringing the total number of confirmed dead to 55, with around a further 11 still listed as missing.
A second excavator had arrived and more were expected to help the search in the hilly region, he said.
Landslides blocked the way of earth-moving equipment initially, but then winding roads and poor weather hindered their progress.
A correspondent at the scene said large fallen tree trunks were hampering recovery efforts and chainsaws were needed to cut through them.
About half the workers were troops drafted in from the military commands in nearby districts, he said.
District regent Rina Iriani told a local newspaper that of the 12 houses destroyed in worst-hit Mogol, at least three belonged to major cultivators of exotic anthurium flowers, for which the area is known.
In adjacent Wonogiri district, the head of the disaster management center said eight bodies had been recovered and nine remained missing. Only manual equipment was being used in the hunt, he said.
Most bodies in the disaster so far have been recovered by workers using their hands and crude equipment such as planks of wood.
In East Java, where raging floods swept away a major bridge, police said about 50 people were estimated to be missing based on witness accounts of vehicles on the bridge at the time.
The state Antara news agency reported that the bodies of two children aged six and seven had been recovered.
"Both children were found by local people combing the river's banks," a district police chief, Sunarta, was quoted as saying.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
US-CHINA SUMMIT: MOFA welcomed US reassurance of no change in its Taiwan policy; Trump said he did not comment when Xi talked of opposing independence US President Donald Trump yesterday said he has not made a decision on whether to move forward with a major arms package for Taiwan after hearing concerns about it from Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Trump’s comments on Taiwan came as he flew back to Washington after wrapping up critical talks in which both leaders said important progress was made in stabilizing US-China relations even as deep differences persist between the world’s two biggest powers on Iran and Taiwan. “I will make a determination,” Trump said, adding: “I’ll be making decisions. But, you know, I think the last thing we need right
TAIWAN ISSUE: US treasury secretary Scott Bessent said on the first day of meetings that ‘it wouldn’t be a US-China summit without the Taiwan issue coming up’ There were no surprises on the first day of the summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday, as the government reiterated that cross-strait stability is crucial to the Asia-Pacific region, as well as the world. As the two presidents met for a highly anticipated summit yesterday, Chinese state media reported that Xi warned Trump that missteps regarding Taiwan could push their two countries into “conflict.” Trump arrived in China with accolades for his host, calling Xi a “great leader” and “friend,” and extending an invitation to visit the White House
RSS