Watch Indonesia's deadly tsunami sweep away entire houses in seconds

A man looks for his belongings amid the debris of his destroyed house in Palu in Central Sulawesi on September 29, 2018, after a strong earthquake and tsunami struck the area.
(Image credit: Bay Ismoyo/Getty Images)

A 7.5-magnitude earthquake triggered a 10-foot-tall tsunami off the Indonesian island of Sulawesi Friday morning, killing at least 384 people and injuring hundreds more. Shocking footage of the moment the wave slammed into the beach in the city of Palu shows entire houses being swept away in a matter of seconds:

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Electricity and communications are down in many areas, and the international airport is closed, making rescue efforts difficult, particularly in more rural regions. "It is not just the people in the large urban areas," said Jan Gelfand of the International Red Cross in Indonesia. "There are a lot of people also living in remote communities who are hard to reach." Additional aftershocks are possible.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.