The death toll from the earthquake that struck Indonesia’s West Java province on Monday rose to 318, after the bodies of eight missing people were found, authorities said Saturday.
Rescue teams continue to search the rubble for the 14 missing people, with less and less hope of finding them alive, while the number of wounded is 7,729the vast majority with minor injuries, according to data from the National Agency for Disaster Management.
Rescue teams are working, among other things, on a huge avalanche that engulfed several buildings near the city of Cianjur, with about 170,000 inhabitants.
The epicenter of this 5.6 magnitude earthquake It occurred in that locality, where it caused damage due to the shallow depth, upon reaching a densely populated area.
According to the authorities, a hundred of the fatalities are children, since the earthquakes struck the West Java province during school hours and caused damage to dozens of educational establishments, with 368 schools destroyed.
One of the biggest problems for the rulers is the management of the 73,693 displaced people, many of them after having lost their homes due to the earthquake, which totally destroyed 58,049 homes, 144 religious centers and 14 health centers.
The search and rescue operation and the distribution of humanitarian aid were hampered by dozens of aftershocks registered after the initial impact, in addition to torrential rains and the risk of new landslides in the region.
Monday’s earthquake is the deadliest in Indonesia since September 2018, when an earthquake and tsunami on the island of Celebes (Sulawesi) killed more than 4,300 people in the country, which lies on the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire. , an area of ​​great seismic activity. and volcanic activity, where around 7,000 earthquakes a year are recorded, most of them moderate.
Source: Observadora
