Death toll from Indonesia school collapse rises to 36 as search continues

The death toll from the collapse of a boarding school in Indonesia’s East Java province has risen to 36, from 14 a day earlier, the country’s disaster mitigation agency said.

Efforts continued for a seventh day to search for the bodies of 27 students still declared missing – mostly teenage boys between the ages of 13 to 19 – trapped under the rubble, the agency said on Sunday.

Hundreds of students, most of them teenage boys, were inside the Al-Khoziny boarding school in the town of Sidoarjo when it collapsed on Monday, initially killing at least five students and injuring about 100.

The recovery operation was about “60 percent” complete, national disaster agency official Budi Irawan told reporters, adding that he hoped it would be concluded soon.

“Our hope is that by tomorrow everything will be levelled and we can determine the approximate number of victims who are in the rubble,” Budi said in a livestreamed news conference.

National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) chief Suharyanto said victim identification had been complicated by the fact that most of the victims were below the age of 18 and did not have government identity cards or fingerprint records.

“Some of the bodies were too badly damaged to be recognised visually,” he said.

The total number of victims recorded is 167, of which 104 have been found and are safe, said Abdul Muhari, head of the Disaster Data, Information and Communication Centre at the BNPB.

Fourteen survivors are receiving hospital treatment, while 89 have been discharged. One has been transferred to another hospital, added Muhari.

The school collapse was so violent that it sent tremors across the neighbourhood, according to residents.

Investigators have been examining the cause of the collapse, but initial indications suggest that substandard construction may have been a factor, experts have said.

The rescue operation was complex because vibrations in one place could affect other areas, officials said.

On Friday, rescuers received the parents’ permission to make use of heavy equipment after failing to find signs of life during previous efforts.

Rescuers dug through tunnels in the remains of the building, calling out the boys’ names and using sensors to detect any movement, but found no signs of life.

Al-Khoziny is an Islamic boarding school, locally known as a pesantren.

Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation, has about 42,000 pesantren serving seven million students, according to religious affairs ministry data.