The heavy rainfall caused landslides on Sulawesi island in Indonesia, resulting in the deaths of at least 14 individuals and the disappearance of 3 others.
Four houses in the Tana Toraja district of South Sulawesi province were struck by mud that cascaded down from the nearby hills shortly before midnight on Saturday, as reported by Gunardi Mundu, the local police chief. It is worth noting that one of the affected houses was hosting a family gathering at the time of the incident.
Numerous soldiers, police officers, and volunteers have united their efforts in the exploration of the villages of Makale and South Makale, situated in a secluded and undulating region, as stated by Mundu. In the early hours of Sunday, the rescue team successfully extricated two injured individuals, one of whom is an 8-year-old girl, and promptly transported them to a nearby medical facility. As of Sunday afternoon, the rescuers had recovered a minimum of 11 deceased individuals in Makale village and three deceased individuals in South Makale. Their search efforts were still ongoing for three other individuals, including a 3-year-old girl, as conveyed by Abdul Muhari, the spokesperson for the National Disaster Management Agency.
The rescue operations were being hindered by disrupted communication lines, adverse weather conditions, and precarious soil conditions. Tana Toraja boasts numerous well-liked tourist destinations, such as a location featuring indigenous dwellings and wooden sculptures of individuals interred in the caverns, referred to as tau-tau. Periodic heavy rains trigger recurrent landslides and inundations in Indonesia, an archipelago of 17,000 islands where a large population resides in hilly regions or on productive floodplains.
