Tue 2 Oct M uhammad Siadi had the vacant stare of someone who might have just returned from a war zone. His shirtless, wiry frame was covered in injuries: a large gash in his neck, a shaved circle around a few bumps on his head and a spray of grazes from his shoulder to his back. On Friday night he had been at home in Sigi, Palu, on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, changing the gas for his wife when the 7.
The quake caused a wall to collapse on his back and a piece of corrugated iron gouged into his neck. As the house caught on fire, Siadi made the harrowing decision to leave his dying wife, trapped under the rubble, so that he and his son could get out alive. In Palu and its surrounds, people are being pushed to the brink. The earthquake and tsunami killed nearly 1, people, destroyed thousands of homes and displaced 59, Without enough food, water or fuel, survivors are desperate.
Authorities had to temporarily shut the airport. Other people have been looting supermarkets and convenience stores or trying to raid cash machines.
At least 1, prisoners are on the loose after prison walls crumbled. On Tuesday evening half a dozen police officers with automatic rifles were guarding long queues of frustrated residents and their gerry cans at a Palu petrol station.
Hengki, a local resident, said he had been waiting for almost eight hours in the searing heat. Others in the queue chimed in with shared anger and disgust. On a drive up from Makassar, convoys of trucks filled with supplies could be seen on the road, accompanied by police escorts.
