Survivors in Petobo, Sulawesi, describe the destruction of their homes, village and community

“It’s like that movie, 2012: doomsday,” says 24-year-old Joshua Michael, as he struggles for a fitting reference to the fate of Petobo, his village on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi where more than a thousand are feared buried in the mud that swept over it after Friday’s earthquake.

Standing next to the remains of his house, the silver roof flattened to the ground, clothes strewn all around it, he is trying to make out where the homes of his neighbours once were.

“The houses just got sucked into the earth and then the mud came over and sealed them over,” he says. “I saw my neighbours get buried alive.”

When the 7.5-magnitude tsunami-triggering quake hit Palu it virtually annihilated Petobo.

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Residents describe the road moving up and down, like a wave, and then side to side like a snake. They called it a land tsunami.

The powerful tremor ripped up the road leaving huge jagged chasms running through it. In some parts, the height of the road is meters apart. It swallowed up houses whole, as it rolled through the village.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Joshua Micheal, 24, standing on the remains of his home in Petobo village, Palu Photograph: Kate Lamb/The Guardian

Petobo then had to contend with a third fatal force of nature: liquefaction.

The US Geological Survey explains it as a process that liquifies the earth, which occurs when soil, saturated with water, and shaken by an earthquake, acts in liquid form.

“It’s doesn’t make sense,” says local resident, Dicky Christian, “but it’s real.”

Joshua Micheal was driving his motorbike home through the rice fields after playing a game of football when it all happened.

He says he has no words for the apocalyptic scene that unfolded before him. People were running and screaming, others were trapped, as the earthquake split open the land and houses tumbled in. He heard people yelling as they went down, then came the fast flows of liquid earth, and mudflows, that sealed them in.

Joshua looks over what was once the village, now covered with some haphazard rice plants, as one of the sites where his neighbours’ houses lie beneath.

Play Video 0:52 Swamped by mud: drone footage of Indonesia’s Petobo village – video

Led the back way to the village by the Petobo resident, with the front entrance sealed off under military guard as excavators worked through piles of dirt metres high, the Guardian saw what was left of a village battered by multiple forces of nature.

The search and rescue team in Petobo had pulled out 19 dead from the village as of Wednesday morning, but the death toll is expected to soar. Teams are only 400 metres in.

“It could be hundreds. Or it could be thousands. We don’t know yet,” said search and rescue worker Chandra.

Petobo just sank into the earth Sudiryo Djalano, political campaigner

Each victim has their own story: some were killed after they were covered in mud, others trapped in the debris, their cars, or in the mosque because it was Magrib prayer. And not all bodies, he adds, were found in one piece.

Petobo residents estimate the final death toll will be far higher.

“There were about 11,000 people in Petobo and I think maybe half are gone,” reckons Sudiryo Djalano, a political campaigner, who collected population data on the village during a recent political drive.

“I mean Petobo just sank into the earth, and it was a densely populated village,” he says.

Muhammad Mansur, a national park officer and Petobo resident guesses it could reach 2,000.

“Some houses were moved about a kilometre away,” he says in disbelief.

In other parts of Palu, where long lines of cars continue to spill out of every petrol station, search and rescue missions are also slow going. From the ground there is the sense the current death toll of 1,374, as of Wednesday morning, does not yet reflect the true extent of the tragedy.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The ruins of a home in Petobo village. Photograph: Kate Lamb/The Guardian

At the battered Mercure hotel, located on Palu’s coast, for example, rescuers are yet to get deep inside, using drones and cameras instead, in attempt to identify victims. They fear the building might crash on top of them at any minute which, from its state, looks possible. The first floor is no longer visible after it sank into the ground, the rest of the foundations cut the skyline at unnatural angles. Somehow a folded white towel atop a chair remains unmoved.

Martinius Hamaele, a carpenter and civil servant has been at the hotel since Friday night, when he rushed down to rescue his daughter, who worked in the hotel’s sales department.

He says he crawled through the rubble on his hands and knees calling out her name, Mauren. She did not answer but others called out for help. “Don’t waste your energy using your voice,” he told them, “find something to bang on the wall and I will trace the sound to you.”

Martinius pulled out seven people that night, one of whom later died, none of them his daughter.

A hotel engineer on the scene said the hotel was almost fully occupied on Friday, which means there would have been at least 100 guests inside. Martinius’ daughter may be among many the victims rescue teams retrieve in the coming days or weeks.

“I believe today is the last chance to find her,” said Martinius, from the chair where he was anxiously watching the proceedings on Wednesday morning, “After that she will be added to the list of the dead.”