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Tourist exodus from Lombok as quake toll hits 105
MATARAM, Indonesia, Aug 7, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Terrified holidaymakers rushed
for boats and planes to leave Indonesia’s Lombok island Tuesday after it
suffered a second deadly quake within a week, as rescuers scrambled to reach
remote areas where survivors are in urgent need of food and shelter.
The shallow 6.9-magnitude quake killed at least 105 people and destroyed
thousands of buildings in Lombok on Sunday, just days after another deadly
tremor surged through the holiday island and killed 17.
Rescuers on Tuesday resumed the desperate search for survivors, and to
recover the bodies of victims in the rubble of houses, mosques and schools
destroyed in the latest disaster.
More than 20,000 people are believed to have been made homeless on Lombok,
with 236 severely injured, and authorities have appealed for more medical
personnel and basic supplies.
The tremor struck as evening prayers were being held across the Muslim-
majority island.
Emergency crews using heavy equipment to search through a collapsed mosque
in northern Lombok found three bodies but also managed to pull one man alive
from the twisted wreckage.
Video posted online by disaster officials showed the man sobbing with
relief as one rescuer told him: “You’re safe sir, you’re safe”.
Authorities said they feared the mosque — now educed to a pile of concrete
and metal bars, its towering green dome folded in on itself — had been
filled with worshippers.
“We estimate there are still more victims because we found many sandals in
front of the mosque,” national disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho
told reporters.
He said major building collapses had also taken place at a “health clinic,
government offices and other public facilities.”
– Tourists flee –
Some 4,600 tourists have been evacuated from the Gili Islands, three tiny,
coral-fringed tropical islands that lie off the northwest coast of Lombok and
are popular with backpackers and divers.
Hundreds crowded onto its powder-white beaches on Monday, desperately
awaiting transport off the normally paradise destination. Two holidaymakers
died on the largest of the three, Gili Trawangan, where buildings suffered
extensive damage. Authorities said an earlier toll of seven dead was
incorrect.
French tourist Laurent Smadja, who had been on Gilli Meno, the smallest of
the three islands, described scenes of chaos and confusion in the aftermath
of the quake as holidaymakers jostled to leave.
“We had no electricity and no information about what to do. We saw
everybody leaving in boats but no boat came to us,” he told AFP.
MORE/MSY/1349 hrs
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On Tuesday he eventually managed to board a boat with locals and head to
nearby Lombok. He made his way to the airport, where hundreds of
holidaymakers slept on the floor overnight awaiting flights out.
“There’s a massive rush of people wanting to get out of Lombok because of
unfounded rumours, such as of a tsunami,” Muhammad Faozal, the head of the
tourism agency in West Nusa Tenggara province, told AFP.
“We can help tourists to get to the airport but of course we can’t buy them
tickets for free,” he said, adding that authorities were providing free
accommodation, food and transport to those in need.
Lombok airport’s general manager said airlines had laid on extra flights
and that his staff had been providing stranded passengers with blankets and
snacks.
“We have been doing our best to manage the tourists flocking the airport,”
he told AFP. “We are doing our best so we can fly out as many as possible.”
Immigration authorities said that seven foreigners were injured in the
quake and are being treated in hospital.
– Survivors cut off –
A lack of heavy equipment and shattered roads have hampered efforts to
reach survivors in the mountainous north and east of Lombok, which were
hardest hit in the quake.
Najmul Akhyar, the head of North Lombok district, estimated that 80 percent
of that region was damaged.
Hundreds of bloodied and bandaged victims have been treated outside damaged
hospitals in the main city of Mataram and other badly affected areas.
Patients lay on beds under wards set up in tents, surrounded by drip stands
and monitors, as doctors in blue scrubs attended to them.
“What we really need now are paramedics, we are short-staffed. We also need
medications,” Supriadi, a spokesman for Mataram general hospital, told AFP on
Monday.
Indonesia, one of the world’s most disaster-prone nations, straddles the
so-called Pacific “Ring of Fire”, where tectonic plates collide and many 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 Indonesia.
BSS/AFP/MSY/1349 hrs