Mass burials to begin as Indonesia toll tops 800

Mass graves were being readied Monday for hundreds of victims of an Indonesian quake-tsunamias authorities battled to stave off disease and reach desperate people still trapped under shattered buildings.

With the death toll already at over 830 and expected to rise further on the devastated island of Sulawesi, there were growing questions about why an early tsunami-warning system had notbeen working for years.

The strong 7.5-magnitude quake struck Friday, toppling buildings and sending walls of seawater crashing into Palu, a city of about 350,000.
Exhausted survivors scoured make-shift morgues for loved ones, and authorities struggled to dig out the living or assess the scale of the devastation in more remote regions beyond Palu.

Grim warnings came that the eventual toll could reach thousands. “The casualties will keep increasing,” said national disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho. “We will start the mass burial of victims, to avoid the spread of disease.” Burials were expected to start later Monday. Rescuers raced against the clock and a lack of equipment to save those still trapped in the rubble, with up to 60 people feared to be underneath one Palu hotel alone. Two survivors have been plucked from the rubble of the 80-room Hotel Roa-Roa, the search and rescue agency said, and there could still be more alive. Desperate survivors turned to looting shops for basics like food, water and fuel as police looked on, unwilling or unable to intervene.
“There has been no aid, we need to eat. We don't have any other choice, we must get food,” one man in Palu told AFP as he filled a basket with goods from a nearby store.

The disaster agency said a tsunami warning system, which might have saved lives, had not worked for six years due to a lack of money.
“Our funding has been going down every year,” the disaster agency's Nugroho said.

- AFP