Deadly 7.7 magnitude earthquake hits Indonesia
A magnitude 7.7 earthquake shook eastern Indonesia early Saturday, leaving at least 38 people dead, dozens injured, and triggering hundreds of aftershocks, as rescue teams struggled to reach the hardest-hit areas near the epicenter.
Flores Island's Sikka, Manggarai, and East Manggarai regencies, all in East Nusa Tenggara Province, were the hardest-hit areas. Suharyanto, head of Indonesia's National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB), held a televised press conference Saturday afternoon local time to announce that the death toll stood at 38, with two people seriously injured and 11 with minor injuries.
Rescue official Fathur Rahman, head of the rescue agency in the port town of Maumere, separately put the toll at 40 dead and 50 injured, with two people still trapped under rubble.
The five initial deaths reported in Sikka Regency were caused by falling rubble as residents slept, East Nusa Tenggara Gov. Emanuel Melkiades Laka Lena said at an earlier news conference, according to Reuters.
A preliminary report from Sikka’s district military command said the quake struck the area around El Say Port, the Indonesian newspaper Tempo reported.
Indonesia's geophysics agency, BMKG, recorded the quake at 4:58 a.m. local time, at a depth of roughly 9 to 15 miles, with the epicenter northeast of Mbay in Nagekeo Regency and north-northwest of Ende, another East Nusa Tenggara city. BMKG head Teuku Faisal Fathani said 235 aftershocks had been recorded by Saturday afternoon, ranging in magnitude from 2.5 to 6.8. A similarly powerful magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck the same region in 1992 at a depth of about 28 kilometers.
Sikka Regency is a coastal district on the northeastern shore of Flores with a population of about 346,600 spread over roughly 647 square miles, according to Indonesia’s Central Bureau of Statistics. Flores Island has about 2 million inhabitants, most of them Roman Catholic, and low-rise construction of brick, timber, and concrete block is typical in its coastal towns and hillside villages.
Nagekeo Regency, the area closest to the epicenter, was effectively cut off in the quake's aftermath. Communication signals were disrupted, and landslides blocked land routes into the region, forcing rescue teams to attempt access by ferry instead. About 2,000 residents in Nagekeo evacuated their homes, and houses, warehouses and government buildings sustained damage, BNPB said. Roads in parts of the district were clogged with traffic, and power supplies were cut.
In Sikka, resident Yohanna Embu said several buildings had been damaged, sending panicked residents running for higher ground. "Many buildings here were damaged," she said. "I saw that the waiting room at the port terminal in Maumere had collapsed."
Students at St. Peter Major Seminary in Sikka, known locally as Ritapiret Seminary, fled in panic when an assembly hall roof collapsed during morning Mass, according to the seminary's rector, the Rev. Guidelbertus Tanga. "Our students and nuns ran out in panic beneath a collapsing roof," Tanga said, adding that at least one priest suffered a broken leg after jumping from the second floor of a building.
Two residents of Talibura village in Sikka, Nona, 51, and Arnold Welianto, described fleeing their homes as the shaking began. Nona said she was resting with 13 family members when the quake hit and that they all ran outside to save themselves. "The quake was massive, the shock was so strong, we were resting at home with family," she told Reuters. Welianto said he woke his child and left the house, and that neighbors near the shoreline had already fled toward the hills as the sea receded.
Strong shaking was felt across East Nusa Tenggara, West Nusa Tenggara and parts of South Sulawesi and Southeast Sulawesi, with tremors lasting about one minute in several areas, BNPB said.
The U.S. Geological Survey estimated more than half a million people on Flores likely experienced very strong shaking, with moderate to strong shaking felt by several million more people across the wider region.
A widely circulated video filmed at a port in Maumere showed a section of a building crumble into rubble while onlookers screamed and fled down the street.
A hospital in Ende district moved patients outside, and at least one landslide was reported. In Nagekeo, hospital customer service official Lukas Lotar, 31, told AFP that patients fled the building and he saw cracked walls.
Nearly 1,000 tourists, 986 in total, were temporarily stranded on Padar Island after shipping in the area was closed following the quake; they were later transported safely back to Labuan Bajo once shipping resumed.
Authorities issued a tsunami warning after the quake and recorded waves of less than 1 meter in several areas. The warning was lifted about three hours later, after BMKG monitoring detected no meaningful change in sea levels along the coast.
Australia’s warning center said the quake posed “no tsunami threat to the Australian mainland, islands or territories.”
BNPB said its main priority was ensuring public safety and preventing further casualties from aftershocks and related hazards, the BBC reported. The agency advised people to stay calm, avoid coastal areas and keep away from buildings with structural damage, and said it was still working to verify the death toll and the scope of the destruction.
Indonesia’s Presidential Palace said the government would move swiftly to address the quake’s impact on Flores Island.
Indonesia sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, a seismically active zone where tectonic plates meet, producing frequent earthquakes and volcanic activity. The country is home to more than 17,000 islands.
