The Guardian
Indonesian rescuers wrapped up the search on Tuesday for victims trapped under the rubble of a collapsed Islamic boarding school in the province of East Java, after retrieving more than 60 bodies, disaster authorities said.
Grief and confusion gripped the small town of Sidoarjo last week after foundational failures caused the Al Khoziny school to cave in on hundreds of people, mostly teenage boys, while they were at afternoon prayers. Most escaped.
The bodies of 67 people in the building have been found, as well as eight body parts that police are trying to identify, the disaster mitigation agency said in a statement, halting the search effort in a disaster it had called the year’s deadliest.
“Operations due to the collapsed structure of the Al Khoziny school … are officially closed,” said Mohammad Syafii, chief of the search and rescue agency, after authorities cleared away the debris.
The agency’s operations director, Yudhi Bramantyo, said rescuers on Tuesday cleared all the rubble at the collapse site, scoured the area, and concluded it was very unlikely they would find more bodies.
“The total number of victims evacuated is 171, with 67 people dead, including eight body parts, and 104 people survived,” Yudhi told a press conference.
Al Khoziny is one of more than 42,000 such schools nationwide, known as pesantren, just 50 of which have a building permit, the public works ministry has said.
Police allege two levels were being added to the two-story building without a permit, leading to structural failure. This has triggered widespread anger over illegal construction in Indonesia.
Indonesia’s 2002 building construction code states that permits have to be issued by the relevant authorities before any construction, or else owners face fines and imprisonment. If a violation causes death, this can lead to up to 15 years in prison and a fine of up to 8bn rupiah (nearly $500,000).
The school’s caretaker, Abdus Salam Mujib, a respected Islamic cleric in East Java, offered a public apology in a rare appearance a day after the incident.
“This is indeed God’s will, so we must all be patient, and may God replace it with goodness, with something much better,” he said. “We must be confident that God will reward those affected by this incident with great rewards.”
