A powerful 7.7 magnitude earthquake shook eastern Indonesia on Saturday morning, August 15. The provisional toll from this earthquake is 40 dead and 50 injured, Fathur Rahman, head of relief, said at the end of the day.
Thousands of kilometers away, a second earthquake of magnitude 6.9 struck the island of Sumatra, in the west of the archipelago, twelve hours later, without any damage or casualties being reported immediately.
Earlier, AFP journalists had seen residents of the north of the island of Flores hastening to move away from the coast, fearing a destructive rise in water levels. On some homes, entire sections of facades had collapsed.
The head of the National Disaster Management Agency, Suharyanto, said people were trapped in several buildings. “These will be the first targets of the intervention teams,” he said.
The disaster management agency is preparing two helicopters and a plane to take part in the rescue operations, he added.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has offered help from the European Union’s Earth observation satellites. “Europe is ready to deploy Copernicus, our eyes in the sky, to support search and rescue efforts. Indonesia, we stand with you,” she wrote on X.
Frequent seismic and volcanic activity
The epicenter of the earthquake, which occurred at 5:58 a.m. local time (9:58 p.m. GMT) at a shallow depth, was 68 kilometers from the town of Ende in the Eastern Lesser Sunda Islands province, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).
“Suddenly, it started to shake and I panicked,” Lukas Lotar, head of the patient management department in a hospital, told AFP. “Patients also fled the hospital, the earthquake was strong. I saw that walls had cracked.”
Several aftershocks struck, including one of magnitude 6.1.
Landslides complicated rescue operations by cutting roads.
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The vast Indonesian archipelago experiences frequent seismic and volcanic activity due to its position on the “Pacific Ring of Fire.”
After warning of a risk of tsunami with waves of half a meter to three meters in the provinces of the Eastern and Western Small Sunda Islands and South Sulawesi, the authorities lifted the alert. “But we will continue to monitor the sea level,” assured Wijayanto, director of the earthquakes and tsunamis department at the national meteorology, climatology and geophysics agency, at a press conference.
Residents of the area had previously been called to move away from the coast or to higher ground. “We urge people along the northern coast of Flores and southern areas, southern islands and the southern region to self-evacuate immediately,” said Abdul Muhari, an official with the national disaster management agency.
Panic and evacuation
On the island of Flores, an AFP correspondent saw residents of the village of Maumere leaving the area.
“The tremor was strong. Fortunately, we were already outside,” Yohanes Babo, who was at the market when the earth started shaking, told AFP.
“People were panicking, running in all directions. We are evacuating for the moment (…) and trying to reach the heights,” added this 56-year-old man, resident of Nagekeo. “My family is safe. No one was hurt.”
A second earthquake, occurring deep inland, reached a magnitude of 6.9 on Saturday evening near Pematangsiantar, on the island of Sumatra.
Armendo Sinaga, a resident of Pematangsiantar, told AFP: “Actually, I didn’t feel it at all. I only learned about the earthquake from the BMKG (Indonesia’s geological agency). Maybe it’s because it was very deep. I don’t see anyone panicking around here.”
The BMKG indicated that this second earthquake did not present any risk of a tsunami.
A 6.2 magnitude earthquake had already struck the east of the Indonesian archipelago in early July, without causing any casualties or major damage.
In 2018, 2,200 people were killed in Palu, a city of around 400,000 inhabitants and capital of the province of Central Sulawesi, by a 7.5 magnitude earthquake followed by a tsunami.
The same year, several tremors left some 550 dead on the tourist island of Lombok and in the Sumbawa region.
And in 2004, Indonesia experienced one of the worst seismic disasters in its history with the 9.1 magnitude earthquake which struck off the large island of Sumatra, triggering a terrible tsunami responsible for the deaths of 170,000 people in the country and around 50,000 others in neighboring countries.
With AFP
