MAMUJU, Indonesia (AP) – Indonesian rescue workers retrieved more bodies from the rubble of houses and buildings that had been toppled by a magnitude 6.2 earthquake, raising the death toll to 56 on Sunday, while military engineers managed to reopen torn roads to clear access for relief supplies.
More heavy equipment reached the worst-hit town of Mamuju and neighboring Majene district on Sulawesi Island, where the earthquake struck Friday night, Raditya Jati, the National Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman said.
Power and telephone communications also started to improve.
Thousands have been left homeless and more than 800 injured, more than half are still being treated for serious injuries, Jati said. In all, 47 people died in Mamuju and nine in Majene.
Jati said at least 415 homes 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 of nearly 300,000 inhabitants, was littered with rubble from collapsed buildings. The governor’s office building was almost razed to the ground by the earthquake and a shopping center reduced to a crumpled hull. Two hospitals were damaged.
The disaster agency said the army corps of engineers cleared the landslide blocked road between Mamuju and Majene. They also rebuilt a damaged bridge,
Many on the island of Sulawesi are still haunted by a magnitude 7.5 earthquake that devastated the city of Palu in 2018, causing a tsunami that caused the bottom to collapse in a phenomenon called liquefaction. More than 4,000 people died, including many who were buried when entire neighborhoods were swallowed up by the falling ground.
Indonesia, home to more than 260 million people, is regularly hit by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis due to its location on the Ring of Fire, an arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific basin.
A massive 9.1 magnitude earthquake off 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.