Thousands of children are living in makeshift shelters six months after a devastating earthquake and tsunami pounded the Indonesian city of Palu, aid agencies said yesterday, as authorities wrestle with a “painfully slow” recovery.
The magnitude 7.5 quake and subsequent deluge razed swathes of the coastal town on Sulawesi Island in September last year, killing more than 4,300 people, the Indonesian National Agency for Disaster Countermeasure said.
At least 170,000 residents from Palu and surrounding districts are still displaced and entire neighborhoods are still in ruins, despite life returning to normal in other areas of the city.
Photo: AFP / Save the Children
“Six months after this disaster we are extremely concerned about the estimated 6,000 children still living in temporary accommodation such as tents, as well as the thousands more that are living in homes that have been damaged,” Save the Children program implementation director Tom Howells said.
Salsa, 10, and her parents have lived in a tent with a dirt floor ever since the towering waves tore through their home in Donggala near the epicenter of the earthquake.
“The light here is from a battery lamp,” the fifth-grader said. “Often when we sleep there are a lot of mice.”
Monsoon rains have fanned outbreaks of malaria and dengue fever, while residents in hard-hit areas have been forced to navigate open sewers and mounds of sharp rubble.
The force of the quake saw entire neighborhoods leveled by liquefaction — a process by which the ground starts behaving like a liquid and swallows up the earth like quicksand.
The Red Cross said that recovery has been “painfully slow” and often complex.
“How can you rebuild a coastline, city or community when large parts of it are simply swallowed by the earth?” chief Indonesia representative Jan Gelfand said.
Apart from the damage to tens of thousands of buildings, the disaster destroyed fishing boats, shops and irrigation systems, robbing residents of their income.
“People in affected communities need a regular source of income to sustain themselves and regain a sense of normalcy,” UN Development Programme Indonesia country director Christophe Bahuet said.
Indonesia has said that the damage bill in Palu topped US$900 million. The World Bank has offered the nation up to US$1 billion in loans to get the city back on its feet.
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