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As a result, people in Palu are largely without any means of motorized transportation, which is further complicating the aid response.

Security is the top priority for the rescue teams, the aid worker said.

“Security on the ground is not great,” he said. “There’s no power, there’s limited food and also no access to clean water. … Our biggest concern is the security of our staff and making sure that their supplies will be going to the most needy.”

\"PHOTO:
Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images
PHOTO: An aerial view shows the earthquake and tsunami devastated neighborhood in Palu, Sulawesi, Indonesia, Oct. 1, 2018.
>

Most organizations are attempting to send aid from the island cities of Makassar and Manado to Palu, a northern Sulawesi city of 330,000 people.

There were more than 100 camps for internally displaced people already with just under 50,000 people in Palu alone, an aid team told ABC News.

North of Palu, in Donggala and closer to the epicenter of the quake, there is a need for heavy equipment in order to clear roads and lift slabs of concrete from broken buildings. But transporting such machinery is impossible when roads have been cracked open, leaving crevasses, or blocked by rubble, trees and other debris.

So towns like Donggala, which has a population of around 220,000, have been difficult for aid workers to reach.

Meanwhile, questions have been raised about Indonesia’s warning systems for alerting citizens of incoming threats.

Photos: Indonesia earthquake and tsunami

The Meterology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) issued a tsunami warning but it was lifted around 20 minutes after the earthquake, reportedly after the tsunami had already hit Palu.

Furthermore a spokesman for Indonesia’s national disaster agency BNPB admitted in a press conference on Sunday that Indonesia has not had a functional tsunami detection system offshore since 2012, a spokesman for Indonesia’s national disaster agency BNPB said at news conference on Sunday, adding that all of the 22 buoys equipped with sensors and scattered across Indonesian waters were not operational and had not functioned since then.

The spokesman, Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, complained at the same conference that his agency had not had adequate government funding in recent years, despite the frequent threat of earthquakes and tsunamis across Indonesia.

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