Around 5,000 people might still be missing in the city of Palu, Central Sulawesi, more than a week after a massive quake and tsunami hit the Indonesian island, officials said on Oct. 7.
Most of the missing are buried under rubble and mud in the worst-hit areas in the city, Petobo and Balaroa, which were swallowed by liquefaction, a phenomenon when soil shaken by an earthquake behaves like a liquid, and hundreds of people are believed to have perished.
The number was reported by the chiefs of the two villages and has not been officially recorded by the National Disaster Mitigation Agency, officials said.
The 7.5 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of the island of Sulawesi, Indonesia, sending a tsunami to Palu and nearby Donggala on Sept. 28.
The official death toll is 1,763 but bodies are still being recovered. A spokesman for the national disaster mitigation agency said on Oct. 7 that searches for bodies would stop on Oct. 11.
Debris would be cleared and areas hit by liquefaction would be turned into parks, sports venues and other public spaces, the spokesman said.
Sulawesi is one of Indonesia’s five main islands. The archipelago sees frequent earthquakes and occasional tsunamis.
In 2004, a quake off Sumatra island triggered a tsunami across the Indian Ocean that killed 226,000 people in 13 countries, including more than 120,000 in Indonesia.
