The death toll of last week’s magnitude 7.5 earthquake and ensuing tsunami that hit the island of Sulawesi reached almost 1,400 on Wednesday. To make matters worse, the wreckage caused by the disaster has left hundreds more missing and unaccounted for while the people of the worst hit areas are left waiting for aid.
On Friday, the quake struck 35 miles northeast of the town of Donggala, which was followed by aftershocks, including one of magnitude 6.7. Following that, a tsunami hit central Sulawesi province’s capital city of Palu, with videos of the tsunami inundating social media channels and news reports.
Since then, Palu has been a heavy focus of the relief efforts with 6,400 personnel from the military, the police, national search and rescue agencies, and the energy and mineral resources department deployed to the area. But rescue efforts have been hampered as responders slowly work their way through the wreckage.
“The death toll is now 1,374 [and] 113 missing,” said Willem Rampangilei, head of Indonesia’s national disaster agency on Wednesday. “And there are still a few bodies trapped under the rubble. We don’t know how many. Our priority is still to find and save people.”
“There are still large areas of what might be the worst-affected areas that haven’t been properly reached, but the teams are pushing, they are doing what they can,” Jens Laerke from the UN’s humanitarian office told The Guardian. In total, the United Nations humanitarian agency, UNOCHA, said 191,000 people were in urgent need of help.
Then, in the midst of all this, the Soputan Volcano erupted in northern Sulawesi Wednesday morning. Video of the eruption showed ash flying more than 19,700 feet into the sky.
“It could be that this earthquake triggered the eruption, but the direct correlation has yet to be seen as there had been an increase in the Mount Soputan activity,” an Indonesian volcanologist named Kasbani told online news site Tempo.
Kasbani said the volcanic activity at Soputan had been increasing since August and according to multiple other sources, there’s no proven link that would convince them last week’s disaster triggered Wednesday’s eruption.
