The death toll in the earthquake registered on the island of Java, Indonesia, this Monday (21), rose to 252, said the governor of the region. The figure, he said, includes many children, who were at school at the time of the tremor – 13:00 local time – and died after the institutions’ buildings collapsed.
The magnitude 5.6 earthquake on the Richter scale, a relatively common figure in Indonesia, which recurrently records tremors of magnitude 6 or 7, was aggravated because it hit the earth at a relatively shallow depth — 10 km below the ground.
The scenario was accentuated by the fact that Cianjur, the most affected city located in the populous province of West Java, is in a mountainous region and has poor infrastructure. Officials said many died when poorly constructed buildings collapsed.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo, who a few days ago welcomed world leaders to the island of Bali for the G20 summit, visited the site and said that the government’s priority will be to remove people from the affected areas —13,000 would have already been displaced— and rebuild roads destroyed by landslides resulting from the earthquake.
“The government will also provide assistance to residents whose homes were affected by the earthquake; construction of new homes must meet earthquake-resistant construction standards,” he said.
The Asian country extends through the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, a highly active seismic zone where different plates of the earth’s crust meet, generating a greater number of earthquakes and volcanoes.
With one local hospital destroyed and others overwhelmed, care for many of the injured was carried out in the streets and parking lots of Cianjur. Cucu, 48, told Reuters news agency that his house had collapsed on him. Two of his children survived after he dug them up. The third is missing.
Hesti, a relative of Cucu, stated that many bodies can be seen around the hospital. Scenes recorded by Indonesian Kompas TV also show people holding cardboard signs asking for food and shelter – supplies are slow to arrive, in part due to the partial destruction of public roads.
An Islamic boarding school in Cianjur was one of the structures destroyed by the earthquake. There, it is believed, many children died. Aprizal Mulyadi, 14, a student at the institution, told the AFP agency that the room he was in collapsed, and rubble covered his legs.
He managed to escape thanks to the help of his friend Zulfikar, who died shortly after being trapped there. “I was devastated to see him there, trapped, but I couldn’t help because my legs and back were injured,” he reported. “It all happened so fast.”
Emergency officials told The New York Times that at least 2,800 homes, 13 schools and 10 public administration buildings in Cianjur were damaged.
On the morning of this Tuesday (22), 90% of the electricity grid in Cianjur, affected by the tremor, had been restored. In mourning, many people wait for authorities to hand over the bodies of their relatives so they can bury them according to Islamic rites.
The death toll is still expected to rise as more victims are found among the rubble. Indonesia’s National Disaster Agency, BNPB, officially maintains the figure of 103 dead and 31 missing, although the governor of West Java, Ridwan Kamil, updates that the number has more than doubled.
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