Pal is his home for almost 30 years.
As a journalist, he covered the conflicts, spanning
from late 90s and early 2000.
Later he covered the devastating Aceh tsunami.
A powerful earthquake rocked Pal.
He was driving with his daughter in the back of the
car, quite far from
the beach.
Only several minutes after the quake, he sent a text
message.
Big quake just now; my car almost upended.
Because of the power and communication blackouts in the city and regencies.
They talk about the devastating first days after the 7.4 magnitude earthquake and tsunami that followed.
Here’s his story:
Searching for his son
Hours after the powerful earthquake, Palu city was dead and chilling.
He was driving around the city to search for his son.
He did not see any other cars or motorcycles that night.
“Chilling, the first night was chilling,” (mengerikan)
“The night was pitch black. Palu was dead. (gelap gulita)
I saw people were outside their houses, sitting, crying.
I heard someone wailing because of his wounds. (mengerang).
But some people were on guard, helping motorists like myself, telling me that ..
I should not take this route because the road was damaged.
The road had some sort of ‘speed bumps’ due to the damage.
They told me, ‘turn left, don’t go here, the road is damaged’.”
In the desperate search to find his son, he had to turn around eight times to find a route that had no damaged roads.
“Fear started to grow inside me, but
I had to go on because I swore to myself, I had to find my son that night or lose him forever.”
After almost eight hours of searching, they finally reunited with his son.
“I cried for the first time after the quake when I saw my son,
“I didn’t just hug Fawaid, I carried him with me until he asked me to put him down.”
Later, his son told him that he and his friends had decided to head to the mountains because of the tsunami.
He and a fellow journalist went to the beach.
“Oh my God, bodies were everywhere,”.
Fear and looting in Palu
During the search for his son, he passed an area damaged by soil liquefaction.
The soil structure collapses because of strong tremors.
He was unable to study the scene clearly, but he heard a roar and saw the mud. (suara gemuruh).
“I was surprised to hear it, but at the time I did not know what it was.
I fled because of it. (kabur)
I hugged my daughter along the way because by that time her fear was increasing,” .
“Only wearing his underpants and crying, he told me the story.
When the quake happened, he was in the bathroom.
He ran out and told his wife and daughter to run for safety.
After the swaying stopped (goyangan), he returned to his house to get a towel and then..
He ran out to the north.
When he looked back, he saw his house was moving and there was mud.
He saw mud rolling like ocean waves.
In the morning, Ruslan began to search for help. (mencari pertolongan)
He got five tents for his extended family (keluarga besar) – comprising 35 people, including himself – to set up a shelter.
He gave away three tents to other families and kept two for his own.
The Makeshift shelters were not large enough to keep them dry.
So on Sunday he went out to search for a larger tent.
But it started raining on Saturday night and
He met a soldier who yelled at him, saying he was busy and said Ruslan had to be quiet. (membentak)
He would hit Ruslan if he kept asking for a tent.
A friend has just returned from asking for some food supplies at a main relief post.
A government official had told that he needed to bring his family card (KK) to be eligible for aid.
“Hearing this, I laughed. A family card, really?
How can we have our family card ready in this kind of situation?” (Bagaimana bisa dalam situasi seperti ini).
Five days after the earthquake, aid had yet to be distributed accordingly.
People began setting up their own relief posts for their neighborhood, (pos penampungan)
but instead of giving aid, the posts begged for supplies with signs reading, “We need relief aid”.
And then the looting started.
He witnessed two incidents with his own eyes.
“One happened to an Alfamidi store in front of a military base camp.
There were many people there. “People were hungry.”
He had not been tempted to loot because “luckily”, he still had some food left from when he bought supplies off the back of a pickup truck.
Survivors’ stories
Ruslan’s house of several decades was totaled.
A picture of what remains shows that the ground floor is nowhere to be seen;
the only thing left standing was a door.
“I am sad about my house, of course.
I’ve had it since I was still [working] in Antara [news agency].
The house was completed after I joined the Post. (kelar-selesai) Two of my children were born there,”.
He has accepted the loss. Things can be replaced, but lives cannot.
He was still searching for his daughter.
My heart stopped while reading it.
Another friend, lost his mother to the soil liquefaction.
She had been buried under the rubble. (puing)
Someone had to saw off a wooden block, and then
we had to carefully pull her body out without damaging it,”.
She was heavy and it was an uphill road.”
They were attending to their food stall Festival when the tsunami hit.
The waves had crashed into them, but they were still able to save themselves.
“Mama, I know you’re strong. If we die, let’s die together,” He recalled telling her mother.
Both survived by holding on to Bridge for 30 minutes, with large waves slammed into them multiple times.
When the disaster struck, many people were on the beach for the festival.
Asti was one of the performers at the event.
Asti kissed her daughter that afternoon. It was their last kiss. The following day, Asti had to pick up her daughter inside a body bag. She had been found among the mangroves.
Another survivor told his own harrowing story.
He was with three family members sitting and eating on the beach, waiting for a performance to start on the festival’s main stage.
When the waves began their assault, the four held on to each other’s hands, but
they were continuously struck by trash and debris carried by the water.
At one point, the group was struck so hard that two of his family members became separated.
He was desperately holding on to his remaining relative, but
the waves crashed into them again and he lost his grip. (pegangan cengkeraman)
He later found himself alone on the roof of a house. His relatives were all gone.
the scene was heart-breaking. (menyayat hati)
“I know this family well. They were good people, modest people who did not get the second chance to live,”
‘Second chance to live’
“Second chance to live”. Ruslan repeated this sentence several times;
it was like a mantra to him.
I thought it would help ease my trauma, but then I stopped.
On the second day after the earthquake, he started getting restless.
They woke up at night, crying, partly because of the powerful aftershocks. (gempa susulan).
He managed to get on an Air Force Hercules to Balikpapan, and then he boarded commercial flights to ..and later Ternate.
He was insistent on
returning to Palu, despite his harrowing ordeal and despite
being told by the Post that.
“Yes, I must do it. I must work and
help people. And Palu is my home, where my work is,”.
He rented an ambulance to bring the
supplies to Palu, to avoid being intercepted by some desperate survivors.
People intercepted trucks carrying
aid and stealing the supplies.
He was determined about his plan to
send aid; he wanted to reach remote neighborhoods.
On Saturday at dawn, he set out with boxes of aid —
disposable diapers, powdered milk, sanitary pads, fuel, drinking water, dried
anchovies prepared
from Makassar for the 24-hour drive
to Palu.
“There is no use in
whining, but we have
to accept and be
grateful that we are still given a chance to live,
so we can share what we have with
others as much as we can,”
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