Exhausted medical staff were treating an endless stream of wounded on Monday, working to limit the risk of the coronavirus spreading, after the deadly earthquake that struck the Indonesian island of Celebes.
At least 81 people have been killed and 19,000 evacuated, officials said, following the magnitude 6.2 earthquake that occurred early Friday, reducing some buildings to rubble piles in the port city of Mamuju.
Masked doctors treat patients with fractures and other injuries at a temporary hospital set up in tents outside the only hospital still operating after the quake.
“The patients are constantly arriving,” Nurwardi, director of the Western Celebes General Hospital in Mamuju, told AFP.
“It is the only functioning hospital in the city. Many victims have to be operated on but our resources and our medicines are limited ”.
The open-air triage center is understaffed and those who work are putting in very long days at risk of contracting COVID-19.
The hospital was trying to make more beds available for surgical care and pitch more tents to care for the injured, notes Nurwardi, who like many Indonesians has only one name.
But the fear that another shock could bring the hospital to the ground complicates matters.
“Many patients do not want to be treated inside the hospital because they are afraid of another earthquake,” and so do doctors, says Nurwardi.
Three days after the disaster, it was still unclear how many victims could still be found under the rubble.
Victims still buried
Most of the 81 dead were found in Mamuju but a few bodies were extracted from buildings further south of the city of 110,000, which is the capital of western Celebes.
Friday’s earthquake triggered panic among residents of the west of the island, already devastated in 2018 by a very strong earthquake followed by a devastating tsunami that killed 4,300 people.
At least 18 people have been removed from the living rubble, relief said.
Police use dogs to help search the site of a crumbling hospital as rescuers continue to fill body bags with bodies extracted from the rubble.
“There are probably still people still buried in the rubble,” Yusuf Latif, spokesperson for relief, told AFP.
Some 19,000 people took refuge in makeshift shelters, tin shacks or tents.
They say they lack food, water, blankets and other emergency equipment.
Many survivors fear returning home for fear of further tremors or a tsunami caused by aftershocks.
The Southeast Asian archipelago of nearly 270 million people has been hit by a series of natural disasters this week, including landslides, flooding and two volcanic eruptions.
On the Indonesian part of the neighboring island of Borneo, at least five people have died in flooding, according to media reports. Floods also killed five people in Manado, the large city in the far north of Celebes.
And in West Java province, at least 32 people have died in landslides.
Two volcanoes on the island of Java, Semeru and Merapi, have erupted in the past two days, without causing any casualties.
The Indonesian archipelago, which lies on the Pacific ‘ring of fire’, an area of high seismic activity, often experiences earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
–
