RUTENG, Indonesia (AP) — Rescue teams in eastern Indonesia recovered six more bodies Sunday after a magnitude-7.7 earthquake struck the day before, bringing the death toll to 53, authorities said. Thousands have been displaced.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the powerful earthquake hit the Flores region in East Nusa Tenggara province, at a depth of 10 kilometers (6 miles) at 5:58 a.m. local time. Residents fled in panic as tsunami warnings were issued
and later lifted.
Authorities have since recorded 995 aftershocks, but only 46 were felt by residents, said Abdul Muhari, the National Disaster Management Agency’s chief for disaster prevention, adding that 135 people were injured.
Rescuers on Sunday dug through debris looking for people feared buried beneath landslides triggered by the quake across six regencies on Flores, a predominantly Catholic island in Muslim-majority Indonesia. They focused on three regencies that remained inaccessible after the earthquake: the hardest-hit Manggarai, East Manggarai and Nagekeo.
“We have cleared most landslides and reopened roads to previously isolated villages, although communication disruptions and power outages continue to hamper search efforts,” said Fathur Rahman, head of the Search and Rescue Office in Maumere, the capital of Sikka regency.
The agency said more than 900 homes were destroyed and 450 more damaged in East Nusa Tenggara province, forcing about 5,000 people into temporary shelters. At least 241 homes were damaged in Flores region alone, Muhari said.
Many residents at Labuan Bajo, the gateway to Komodo National Park, one of Indonesia’s best-known tourist destinations, spent the night outdoors, fearing strong aftershocks.
“The shaking was terrifying, so intense that my house nearly collapsed,” said Anastasia Imad, a farmer, speaking from a makeshift green tent beside her damaged home. “We feared the aftershocks would bring it down on us while we slept.”
Landslides blocked sections of the Trans-Flores Highway, a roughly 700-kilometer (435-mile) road linking communities across the mountainous island.
Meanwhile, relief workers distributed rice, ready-to-eat meals, drinking water, blankets and medicine, while emergency shelters were being set up for displaced residents. Authorities said restoring electricity and communications, as well as delivering aid to remote villages isolated by landslides, remained among the biggest challenges.
Indonesia, an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands, is prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions because of its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a horseshoe-shaped arc of seismic faults and volcanoes.
Flores has experienced some of the country’s deadliest disasters. A powerful earthquake and tsunami in 1992 killed about 2,500 people on the island.
In 2018, a magnitude 7.5 earthquake triggered a tsunami on Sulawesi that killed more than 4,400 people. In 2004, a magnitude 9.1 quake off Sumatra unleashed a tsunami that killed about 230,000 people in a dozen countries.
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Associated Press writers Niniek Karmini and Edna Tarigan in Jakarta, Indonesia, contributed to this report.
