The death toll from the 7.7-magnitude earthquake that struck Indonesia’s eastern island of Flores has risen to 38, while authorities lifted a tsunami warning they had issued after urging residents in coastal areas to evacuate and move to higher ground.
Shallow epicentre and successive tremors
The US Geological Survey located the epicentre of the earthquake, which struck at 5:58, off the island’s northern coast, about 68 kilometres northwest of Ende regency, at a depth of 10 kilometres.
The earthquake was followed by several tremors, one of which measured 6.1. Fathur Rahman, the official in charge of search and rescue operations in the city of Maumere, said by phone that information received indicated that 38 people had been killed.
According to the information we have received, 38 people were killed.
In northern Flores, residents were seen hurriedly moving away from the beaches for fear of tidal waves arriving, while parts of the facades of some homes collapsed.
Lucas Lothar, an official at one of the area’s hospitals, said everything had suddenly begun shaking and that he had felt panic. He added that patients had also fled the hospital, describing the earthquake as very powerful and saying he had seen cracked walls.
Tsunami warning lifted as monitoring continues
Indonesian authorities had issued a warning of a possible tsunami before lifting it shortly afterwards. Wijayanto, director of the earthquake and tsunami division at the National Agency of Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics, said at a news conference: “We will continue monitoring sea levels.”
Before the warning was lifted, residents in the area were asked to leave the coast or move to higher ground. Abdul Muhari, an official at the National Disaster Management Agency, said: “We urge residents living along the northern coastline of Flores island, as well as in the southern areas, the southern islands and the southern region, to evacuate immediately on their own initiative.”
Indonesia lies on the “Ring of Fire”
Indonesia and neighbouring countries are frequently hit by earthquakes because they lie within the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, a belt of seismically active areas stretching from Japan through Southeast Asia and the Pacific Basin.
In early July last year, a 6.2-magnitude earthquake struck eastern Indonesia without causing casualties or significant damage. In 2018, a 7.5-magnitude earthquake followed by a tsunami killed 2,200 people in Palu, the largest city in Central Sulawesi province.
Indonesia also experienced a 9.1-magnitude earthquake off the coast of the island of Sumatra in the west of the country in 2004. It caused a tsunami that killed 170,000 people in the archipelago and around 50,000 in neighbouring countries.
