Mother’s hope for son’s life dims after school collapse leaves dozens trapped
The anxiety gripped Jayanti Mandasari as soon as she got off the phone with her son M. Muhfi Alfian on Monday.
A generous boy, he had called to ask for money to treat his friends to some snacks. Despite the light-hearted nature of the call, she could not shake off her unexplained fears.
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Those fears were confirmed when a younger sibling told her the Islamic boarding school Alfian attended, Al Khoziny, had collapsed during afternoon prayers, killing at least five people and trapping dozens of students and several workers in the rubble.
About 60 people, including Alfian, who has not been declared dead by officials, remained trapped under the remains of the school in the East Java town of Sidoarjo, located about 660 km (410 miles) east of the Indonesian capital Jakarta.
Rescuers said the search for survivors is continuing on Friday, even though they found no signs of life on Thursday as they called out students’ names through tunnels inside the remains and used sensors to detect vital signs.
“I was shocked, my God,” Jayanti, 43, told Reuters on Thursday, while being consoled by her sister Hamida Soetadji at a waiting centre near the school. “I couldn’t hold back my tears.”
Jayanti was among the scores of parents holding their breath for news about their children near a whiteboard where a list of survivors was posted.
Her hope is dimming that emergency workers will find her son alive.
“Right now, it seems impossible. Maybe God took him gently. And I accept,” she said, starting to cry.
Authorities said the school collapsed because its foundations could not support ongoing construction work on the upper floors.
School management should have anticipated something like that, Hamida said.
There are 42,000 such schools across Indonesia, known locally as a pesantren, serving about 7 million students, data from Indonesia’s religious affairs ministry shows.
Jayanti said she is so traumatised she will not be sending her other children to the school.
Ambulance line up outside school
More than 10 ambulances lined up near a collapsed Islamic school building in Indonesia’s East Java province on Friday as rescuers continued their search for nearly 60 students still trapped under the rubble, a Reuters witness said.
The Al Khoziny school in the town of Sidoarjo collapsed on Monday, cratering upon hundreds of teenage students during afternoon prayer, its foundations unable to support ongoing construction work on its upper floors.
The trapped students were mostly teenage boys from the ages of 13 to 19. Alongside the ambulances was a crane deployed to excavate some of the debris.
By late Thursday, five had been confirmed dead and 30 people were in treatment in hospital, Indonesia’s disaster officials said.
Rescuers found no signs of life on Thursday after digging through tunnels in the remains of the building, despite calling out the boys’ names and using sensors to detect any movement.
Al Khoziny is an Islamic boarding school known locally as a pesantren.
Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation, has a total of about 42,000 pesantren, serving 7 million students, according to data from the country’s religious affairs ministry.
