MAMUJU, Indonesia (AP) – Indonesian rescuers recovered more bodies from the rubble of houses and buildings brought down by a 6.2 magnitude earthquake, increasing the death toll to 56 on Sunday, while military engineers managed to reopen destroyed roads to free up the access to relief products.
More heavy equipment arrived in the worst-hit city of Mamuju and the neighboring district of Majene on Sulawesi Island, where the earthquake occurred on Friday night, said Raditya Jati, a spokesman for the National Disaster Mitigation Agency.
Power supply and telephone communications have also started to improve.
Thousands were left homeless and more than 800 injured, more than half still receiving treatment for serious injuries, Jati said. A total of 47 people died in Mamuju and nine in Majene.
Jati said at least 415 houses in Majene were damaged and about 15,000 people were moved to shelters. The agency is still collecting data from the area.
Mamuju, the provincial capital with almost 300,000 inhabitants, was littered with the wreckage of destroyed buildings. The building of the governor’s office was almost devastated by the earthquake and a shopping mall reduced to a dough. Two hospitals were damaged.
The disaster agency said the Army’s corps of engineers cleared the road connecting Mamuju and Majene, which was blocked by landslides. They also rebuilt a damaged bridge,
Many on the island of Sulawesi are still haunted by a 7.5 magnitude earthquake that devastated the city of Palu in 2018 and triggered a tsunami that caused the collapse of the soil in a phenomenon called liquefaction. More than 4,000 people were killed, including many who were buried when entire neighborhoods were swallowed by the falling soil.
Indonesia, where more than 260 million people live, is frequently hit by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis because of its location in the “Ring of Fire”, an arc of volcanoes and geological faults in the Pacific Basin.
A magnitude 9.1 earthquake on the island of Sumatra in western Indonesia in December 2004 triggered a tsunami that killed 230,000 people in a dozen countries.
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Karmini reported from Jakarta, Indonesia.