Indonesians grieve, rescue injured from rubble as earthquake death toll rises to at least 268
The death toll in Indonesia rose to at least 268 on Tuesday as rescuers continued to dig through rubble and search for scores of people still missing after a 5.6-magnitude earthquake.
The Monday temblor flattened buildings and left hundreds injured, and rescuers used jackhammers, circular saws and sometimes their bare hands to search the debris of what had once been buildings.
Among those killed were 11 family members of a man named Enjot, who raced home on his motorbike to find his neighborhood flattened after getting a call from his daughter.
“Men, women and children cried, while people who were trapped in the collapsed houses were screaming for help,” he said. “I saw terrible devastation and heart-rending scenes.”
The quake hit the rural, mountainous district of Cianjur on Java, Indonesia’s main and most densely populated island. More than 2.5 million people live in the district, 175,000 of them in the main town, also named Cianjur.
Some of the most remote areas were still unreachable, leaving the full number of dead unknown. With more than 1,000 injured, people were hooked up to IVs and set up on stretchers and cots in tents outside overwhelmed hospitals.
The Asian archipelago nation is earthquake-prone in general, and the magnitude normally would not have caused so much damage, experts said. But its depth of just 6 miles below the Earth’s surface conspired with inadequate infrastructure to cause widespread destruction. Even Jakarta, the nation’s capital about three hours way by car, evacuated swaying high-rises during the quake.
“I was crying and immediately grabbed my husband and children,” said a woman named Partinem, describing how her house in rural Cianjur shook as if it were “dancing,” then collapsed just as she escaped with her family. “If I didn’t pull them out, we might have also been victims.”
At least 151 people were still missing and 1,083 were injured, the National Disaster Mitigation Agency said. Some of the missing were possibly among the dead, who had not all been identified.
“We are racing against time to rescue people,” said a public works and housing spokesperson.
With News Wire Services
