Cianjur | Rescuers were trying to find survivors among the rubble on Tuesday in the aftermath of an earthquake on the Indonesian island of Java that left at least 162 people dead and several hundred injured.
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The epicenter of the 5.6 magnitude earthquake was located near the city of Cianjur, in the province of West Java, the most populous of this Southeast Asian archipelago.
The victims perished in the collapse of buildings, but also in landslides triggered by the tremors that hit this very hilly region.
“Today we are concentrating on extracting the victims buried by the landslides,” Rudy Saladin, a local military official, told AFP.
“It is possible that there are more victims,” he said.
Rescuers are trying to make their way using bulldozers and chainsaws through the debris and fallen trees to reach areas where they believe residents are trapped, Dimas Reviansyah, a rescuer from the city, told AFP. 34 years old who works alongside dozens of others.
“I haven’t slept at all since yesterday (Monday) but I have to continue because there are victims who have not been found,” he said.
Monday evening, the Indonesian agency in charge of disaster management (BNPB) estimated that at least 25 people were still under the rubble.
Among the victims are in particular students of an Islamic boarding school or even inhabitants who died in their homes, killed by the fall of the roof or the walls of their accommodation.
“The room collapsed and my legs were buried in the rubble. Everything happened so quickly,” Aprizal Mulyadi, 14, who was dragged out and brought to safety by one of his friends, Zulfikar, who later lost his life, told AFP.
Relief operations delayed
Searches are made more difficult by blocked roads and power cuts in this hilly rural area where houses are made of both wood and concrete.
Over 2,000 homes were damaged. Some 13,000 people have been taken to evacuation centers, West Java Governor Ridwan Kamil said, citing figures from the agency in charge of emergency management.
In the cities, doctors were treating patients outdoors as well as in makeshift care units under tents after the earthquake, which shook buildings as far as the capital, Jakarta.
Relatives were waiting for authorization from the authorities to remove bodies stored in morgues in order to bury their loved ones in accordance with their Islamic faith.
In a snapshot by an AFP photographer, we see a father carrying the body of his son wrapped in a white shroud in his arms through his village located near Cianjur.
Many other residents continued to search for their missing relatives amid the chaos
Rahmi Leonita’s father was on his motorbike when the earthquake shook the city of Cianjur and she has been looking for him since the day before.
“His phone is off. I am in shock. I am very worried but I still have hope” to find him, said the 38-year-old Indonesian with tears streaming down her cheeks.
The damage of the earthquake, which struck Monday after 1:20 p.m. local time, was aggravated by more than 60 aftershocks of magnitude 1.8 to 4 in the city of Cianjur which is home to some 175,000 inhabitants.
The Indonesian president was due to visit the scene of the earthquake on Tuesday, according to Metro TV.
Located on the Pacific “ring of fire” where tectonic plates meet, Indonesia is regularly confronted with earthquakes or volcanic eruptions.