MATARAM, INDONESIA: on Monday, Indonesian security forces and emergency employees raced to aid victims of a robust earthquake on Lombok that killed a minimum of 91 people, as strong aftershocks sparked terror on the vacation island that suffered another deadly quake simply a week ago.
Rescuers looked for survivors within the rubble of houses, mosques, and schools that were among the thousands of buildings destroyed during the disaster that affected on Sunday evening.
“The search and rescue team is still scouring the scene and evacuating (people),” national disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said.
“We estimate the number of victims will rise.” The quake triggered a tsunami warning, that was later canceled, and was additionally felt on the near island of Bali, one of Southeast Asia’s leading destinations, where tourists ran onto the streets because the tremor struck.
The shallow 6.9-magnitude quake sent thousands of Lombok residents and tourists scrambling outdoors, wherever several spent the night as strong aftershocks including one of 5.3-magnitude continued to rattle the island.
The quake knocked out power in many areas, and components of Lombok remained without electricity on Monday.
Hundreds of bloodied and bandaged victims were treated outside damaged hospitals within the main town Mataram and other hard-hit parts of the island.
Patients lay on beds under makeshift wards sent up in tents, surrounded by drip stands and monitors, as doctors in blue scrubs attended to them. Many injured people are being treated outside of hospitals and health clinics as a result of the buildings were damaged.
Most of the victims were within the mountainous north and east of the island, away from the most tourist spots and coastal districts within the south and west.
Najmul Akhyar, the head of North Lombok district, estimated that 80 % of that region was damaged by the quake. some mosques have collapsed and that we suspect some worshippers are still trapped inside. It was the second earthquake in an exceedingly week to hit the Lombok area, whose beaches and hiking trails draw holidaymakers from around the world.
That 6.4-magnitude quake left 17 individuals dead, damaged hundreds of buildings and triggered landslides that in short trapped trekkers on popular mountain hiking routes.
In the latest earthquake, facilities at Lombok’s main airport were unaffected, although passengers were briefly evacuated from the main terminal.
Singapore’s Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam, who was in Lombok for a security conference once the earthquake struck, described on Facebook how his hotel room on the 10th floor shook violently.
Bali’s international airport suffered harm to its terminal but the runway was unaffected and operations had returned to normal, disaster agency officers said.
Indonesia, one of the foremost disaster-prone nations on earth, straddles the alleged Pacific “Ring of Fire”, where tectonic plates collide and lots of the world’s volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur.
In 2014, a devastating tsunami triggered by a magnitude 9.3 undersea earthquake off the coast of Sumatra in western Indonesia killed 220,000 people in countries around the Indian Ocean, including 168,000 in the land.
