Thousands of residents on Indonesia’s Flores island were still waiting for emergency assistance on Monday as the nation observed its 81st Independence Day, just days after a powerful earthquake left at least 68 people dead, more than 200 injured and hundreds of homes and buildings damaged.
Across Flores, in East Nusa Tenggara province, many communities spent the holiday in grief and uncertainty, mourning those killed while hoping relief teams could reach areas still isolated by the devastating quake.
At Indonesia’s Independence Day ceremony in Jakarta, President Prabowo Subianto called on those in attendance to pray for disaster victims in East Nusa Tenggara and elsewhere in the country. He made the appeal as he led a nationwide moment of silence to honor Indonesia’s independence heroes.
The National Disaster Management Agency, known as BNPB, said more than 1,300 homes were damaged when the earthquake struck East Nusa Tenggara on Saturday, including nearly 250 houses destroyed on Flores alone. About 5,000 people have been displaced into temporary shelters, while 213 people were reported injured.
The governor of East Nusa Tenggara declared a 14-day state of emergency on Sunday as authorities worked to coordinate rescue operations and relief distribution.
According to the US Geological Survey, the earthquake hit shortly before 6 a.m. Saturday at a depth of 10 kilometers, or 6 miles. Residents rushed from their homes in fear after tsunami warnings were issued, though the alerts were later lifted. By Monday, officials had recorded 1,576 aftershocks, but only a relatively small number were strong enough to be felt.
Thousands await aid amid devastation
On Flores, thousands of people spent the night into Monday outdoors, sheltering beneath tarpaulin tents beside the ruins of their homes as fears of further aftershocks kept families from returning inside.
An Associated Press photojournalist on the island described scenes of extensive destruction: trees toppled across roads, massive boulders thrown down hillsides by landslides, and homes either flattened or badly damaged. In some places, collapsed buildings had crushed parked cars beneath the rubble.
For many residents, the disaster revived painful memories of a powerful earthquake and tsunami that struck Flores in 1992, killing about 2,500 people.
“My house is just rubble now,” said Rasyid Jafar, a clothing trader in the village of Reo, the hardest-hit area in Manggarai regency, ”We need food, medicine and clean water urgently.”
Nearly 1,500 military and police personnel have been deployed across the disaster zone, supported by 10 aircraft to distribute 275 tons of aid to the area as logistical challenges have slowed deliveries to some hard-hit communities, said Abdul Muhari, the BNPB’s deputy chief, in a video statement.
Authorities set up two emergency field hospitals in the worst-hit town of Ruteng to treat earthquake victims after local hospitals were damaged, with two crisis management teams overseeing a health emergency operation center, Muhari said.
He also said rescue teams continue searching for victims in the affected areas, although no residents have reported any family members still missing.
Rescuers struggle to reach isolated communities
Aid workers reached tiny Palue Island, one of the areas closest to the earthquake’s epicenter, late Sunday, after a difficult sea and land journey through landslide-hit terrain, authorities said. Thousands of residents remained in urgent need of assistance after days of isolation.
“The roads are steep and many were blocked by landslides. It was a near-death journey,” said deputy police chief of Sikka regency, Marselus Yugo Amboro, whose team was among the first to reach the island with emergency supplies.
He said initial assessments revealed extensive damage, with one villager killed, two seriously injured and nearly 150 homes destroyed.
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.
In 2018, a magnitude 7.5 earthquake triggered a tsunami on the island of 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, nearly 170,000 in Aceh province alone.
Karmini reported from Jakarta. Associated Press journalists Edna Tarigan, Dita Alangkara and Andi Jatmiko, in Jakarta, Indonesia, contributed to this story.
