Rescuers in Indonesia are desperately searching for 91 people, mostly teenage boys, believed to be trapped under the rubble of an Islamic boarding school that collapsed on Tuesday, killing at least three. The disaster struck in the East Java town of Sidoarjo, about 780km east of Jakarta, while pupils were holding late afternoon prayers in a mosque on the lower floor of a building whose upper levels were under construction.
By late evening, three bodies had been recovered and 99 children and workers accounted for. The head of the local rescue agency, Nanang Sigit, said signs of life had been detected beneath the debris. “We used a camera and were able to detect six victims who showed signs of life,” he told reporters. “When they saw the light from the search camera, they were moving their legs.”
Families gathered around a whiteboard listing known survivors, searching for names of their children. Holy Abdullah Arif, 49, wept as he held up a picture on his mobile phone of his nephew Rosi, still missing. He described running through the ruins shouting, “Rosi! Rosi! If you can hear me and can move, get out!” He added that a child from the rubble screamed back, saying he was stuck but was not Rosi, and pleaded for help.
An excavator and a crane were deployed to shift concrete slabs, but Nanang Sigit said heavy equipment would not be used for fear of causing the remaining structure to collapse. Abdul Muhari, a spokesperson for the disaster mitigation agency (BNBP), said the building collapsed after its foundation pillars failed to support the weight of new construction on the fourth floor. He called for stricter safety standards and urged the public to supervise construction processes more carefully.
Local media quoted a school official saying construction work had been ongoing for the past nine months. Lax building standards are a widespread concern in Indonesia, where it is common to leave structures partially completed and add floors later when budgets allow. Earlier this month, at least three people were killed when a building hosting a prayer recital collapsed in West Java, and in 2018 seven teenagers died in Cirebon and 75 were injured when a mezzanine floor collapsed in the Jakarta stock exchange.
