Rescuers combed through debris for survivors on Saturday (Aug 15) after a powerful earthquake struck off Indonesia’s eastern Flores island, killing at least 47 people, according to a disaster official.
The national disaster management agency (BNPB) raised the death toll from 40 late Saturday, and rescue official Fathur Rahman said 50 people were injured in the 7.7-magnitude quake.Suharyanto, who leads the BNPB, said earlier that people were trapped in several buildings.
“These will be the initial targets of the disaster response teams,” said Suharyanto, who, like many Indonesians, uses one name.
Nearly 160 houses, dozens of educational and health facilities and other public buildings were damaged when the earthquake struck the popular tourist island in Indonesia’s east, the BNPB reported.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said preparations were underway to bring aid to some 2,000 people in temporary shelters.
The government sent 50,000 aid packages weighing a total of 275 tonnes to the area, and European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen offered help from the bloc’s Copernicus Earth observation satellites.
“Europe stands ready to deploy Copernicus, our eyes in the sky, to support search and rescue efforts. Indonesia, we stand with you,” she wrote on X.
Flores was struck by a 7.7-magnitude earthquake in 1992, which triggered a tsunami and resulted in around 2,500 deaths.
A devastating 9.1-magnitude tremor in 2004 struck off the coast of Sumatra and triggered a tsunami that killed 220,000 throughout the region, about 170,000 of them in Indonesia, in one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history.
