Visits: 4
“They told me they saw lots of houses that were destroyed,” he said. “It is very bad.”
Even as aid groups began the grim motions of starting the gears of disaster relief, some complained that foreign aid workers with deep expertise were being prevented from traveling to Palu. According to Indonesian regulations, funding, supplies and staffing from overseas can only start flowing if the site of a calamity is declared a national disaster zone. That has not happened yet.
“It’s still a province level disaster,” said Aulia Arriani, a spokeswoman for the Indonesian Red Cross. “Once the government says, ‘O.K., this is a national disaster,’ we can open for international assistance but there’s no status yet.”
As another night fell on Palu after Friday’s earthquake and tsunami, friends and family of those still missing were holding out hope that their loved ones would be the miracles that leaven the bleak story lines of natural disasters.
On Saturday, a little boy was delivered to the police after having been plucked from a sewer. On Sunday, rescuers freed a woman who had been pinned under rubble for two days with the body of her mother next to her.
Gendon Subandono, the coach of the Indonesian national paragliding team, had trained two of the missing paragliders for the Asian Games, which wrapped up earlier this month in Indonesia. Others of those trapped at the Roa Roa Hotel, Mr. Mandagi included, were his students.
“As a senior in the paragliding field, I have my own emotional burden,” he said.
Mr. Gendon recounted how, in the hours after the news of the Roa Roa Hotel collapse circulated among the paragliding community, he had desperately sent WhatsApp messages to the Palu competitors, who were taking part in the beach festival. His messages, though, only resulted in one gray check mark, rather than a pair of blue checks.
“I think that means the messages were not delivered,” he said.