At least 268 people were killed, morethan 1000 people are hurt and many are still missing after 5.6 magnitude quake struck Indonesia’s main island of Java.
More rescuers and volunteers were deployed Wednesday in devastated areas on Indonesia’s main island of Java to search for the dead and missing from an earthquake that killed at least 268 people.
With many missing, some remote areas still unreachable and more than 1,000 people injured in the 5.6 magnitude quake, the death toll was likely to rise. Hospitals near the epicenter on the densely populated island were already overwhelmed, and patients hooked up to IV drips lay on stretchers and cots in tents set up outside, awaiting further treatment.
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More than 12,000 army personel were deployed Wednesday to increase the strength of search efforts that being carried out by more than 2,000 joint forces of police, the search and rescue agency and volunteers, said Suharyanto, the National Disaster Mitigation Agency chief, Indonesian media reported.
58,000 survivors were moved to shelters and more than 1,000 people were injured, with nearly 600 of them still receiving treatment for serious injuries.
Rescuers had recovered 268 bodies from collapsed houses and landslides that triggered by the earthquake, and at least 151 still reported missing. But not all of the dead have been identified, so it’s possible some the bodies pulled from the rubble are of people on the missing list.
Rescue operations were focused on about a dozen villages in Cianjur, where people are still believed trapped, Suharyanto said.
In a virtual news conference on Tuesday evening, Suharyanto said that more than 22,000 houses in Cianjur were damaged and the agency was still collecting data on damaged houses and buildings in the town.
In 2004, an earthquake measuring at least 9.1 magnitude struck west of Indonesia and set off an Indian Ocean tsunami in a disaster that killed more than 230,000 people in a dozen countries, most of them in Indonesia.
