Indonesia school collapse: search for victims ends as 67 confirmed dead

After recovering over 60 fatalities, Indonesian rescuers concluded their search for survivors buried in the debris of an Islamic boarding school that collapsed in the East Java region on Tuesday, according to disaster officials.

Last week, hundreds of people, primarily teenage boys, were attending afternoon prayers when the Al Khoziny school collapsed due to structural issues, leaving the little town of Sidoarjo in a state of grief and despair. Most got away.

The search effort in what the disaster mitigation agency called the deadliest catastrophe of the year was halted when it announced in a statement that the bodies of 67 individuals inside the building had been located, along with eight body parts that police are attempting to identify.

Operations due to the collapsed structure of the Al Khoziny school … are officially closed,” said Mohammad Syafii, chief of the search and rescue agency, after authorities cleared away the debris . The agency’s operations director, Yudhi Bramantyo, said rescuers on Tuesday cleared all the rubble at the collapse site, scoured the area, and concluded it was very unlikely they would find more bodies.

“The total number of victims evacuated is 171, with 67 people dead, including eight body parts, and 104 people survived,” Yudhi told a press conference.

Large pieces of concrete had been lifted by rescuers using cranes and excavators. They dug tunnels and yelled the names of victims they thought might still be alive. According to the public works ministry, only 50 of the more than 42,000 pesantren (schools) in the country, including Al Khoziny, have a building permit.
According to the police, the two-story building’s structural failure resulted from the illegal addition of two stories. This has led to a great deal of ire in Indonesia over unauthorized construction.