Death toll in Indonesia from earthquake and tsunami could reach into the thousands (Video)

Dozens remain missing, some thought to be trapped in the debris of collapsed buildings in the city of Palu.

Bodies have been lying in city streets and the injured are being treated in tents because of damage to hospitals.

An air traffic controller at Palu airport died ensuring a plane took off safely after Friday's quake.

The scale of casualties and damage beyond the city is still unclear.

Anxious survivors in Palu bedded down in the open air on Saturday night, heeding advice by officials not to return to their homes as a precaution. Some buildings were completely flattened.

Indonesia is prone to earthquakes because it lies on the Ring of Fire - the line of frequent quakes and volcanic eruptions that circles virtually the entire Pacific rim.

In 2004, a tsunami triggered by an earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra killed 226,000 people across the Indian Ocean, including more than 120,000 in Indonesia.

Just 34 minutes after Indonesia was hit by another major earthquake, officials called off a tsunami warning. Aid agencies and others – still dealing with the aftermath of a devastating quake in August – breathed a sigh of relief.

What they didn’t know was that, just about that same time, a 10-foot wall of seawater was tearing through the city of Palu and other areas Friday on an island in the center of the vast Indonesian archipelago.

Amid the roar of onrushing sea and terrified cries for help, the tsunami tore homes off their foundations, snapped palm trees and dragged away victims – some preparing for a beach festival at dusk on Friday. Bodies were later left on the sand as the waters receded, and some were dragged out to sea.

More than 420 died in Palu alone, officials said Saturday as they began to take stock of the devastation and count the dead amid fears the tally could rise significantly from the 7.5 magnitude quake and the tsunami that churned over parts of Sulawesi, about 800 miles northwest of Jakarta.

Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla, in an interview with local media, said the death toll could reach well into the thousands.

Among the dead was a young Indonesian air traffic controller who stayed at his post when the earthquake hit to ensure that a plane carrying hundreds of passengers took off safely. He jumped from the tower and died before a medical helicopter could reach him.

Elsewhere, rescue teams confronted washed out roads and bridges as they tried to reach another city, Donggala, and other areas completely cut off by the quake and tsunami.

Indonesian officials also may face another reckoning over why the tsunami alerts were pulled even as a disaster was roaring ashore, raising questions about the level of monitoring and post-quake analysis in a nation along some of the world’s most active fault lines.

“People were still going about their activities on the beach and did not immediately run,” said Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, spokesman for Indonesia’s National Disaster Management Agency, who said that hundreds were gathered in Palu for a beach party. The number of deaths, he said, will “continue to rise as the search continues.”

Indonesian officials and aid agencies struggled with battered communications, destroyed roads and landslides. Even aid deliveries by sea have been a challenge, as Palu’s port was badly damaged by the tsunami.

The second badly hit city, Donggala, remained inaccessible after a main bridge collapsed.

“We’re now getting limited communications about the destruction in Palu city, but we have heard nothing from Donggala, and this is extremely worrying,” the Red Cross said in a statement. “There are more than 300,000 people living there. This is already a tragedy, but it could get much worse.”

Rescue officials will now have to deal with the impact of the second major earthquake in Indonesia in two months.

In August, a 6.9-magnitude earthquake and a series of strong aftershocks hit the island of Lombok, south of Sulawesi, killing more than 450 people. World Vision, a relief agency, planned to send assessment teams to Palu that were expected to reach the city Sunday. But the organization still had many of its staff members in Lombok responding to the destruction and widespread loss of homes there.

“Our own staff have been affected and their own homes damaged. We are deploying in teams, but at this stage communications with Palu, on the island of Sulawesi, is extremely challenging, so we, like others, are grappling with understanding the full impact of this disaster,” said the aid agency’s national director in Indonesia, Doseba Sinay.

Palu’s airport was closed Saturday, its runway badly cracked from the quake. Rescue workers have resorted to long drives through blocked roads amid the constant threat of landslides.

The city is built around a narrow bay, which may have magnified the force of the tsunami surge as it pushed through the inlet.

Nugroho, the disaster agency’s spokesman, said thousands of homes, hotels, shopping centers, hospitals and other public facilities were damaged. Hospital patients in Palu are being treated outside the building to avoid the danger of potential aftershocks.

In Palu, about 17,000 people have been evacuated, scattered across centers in 24 locations.

Indonesia is prone to earthquakes because of its location on the “Ring of Fire,” an arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific Basin.

In December 2004, a 9.1-magnitude earthquake off Sumatra in western Indonesia triggered a tsunami that killed 230,000 people in a dozen countries.

The Washington Post