Lombok quake leaves 156,000 displaced
Death toll rises to 347 three days after the disaster; victims still wait for help
BANGSAL, Indonesia — Aid began reaching isolated areas of the Indonesian island struggling after an earthquake that killed at least 347 people as rescuers on Wednesday doubled down on efforts to find those buried in the rubble.
The death toll was based on data given by sub-districts across the hardest-hit North Lombok district on Lombok island in West Nusa Tenggara province, Xinhua News Agency quoted Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, the spokesman of the national disaster management agency, as saying on Wednesday.
Volunteers and rescue personnel were erecting more temporary shelters for the tens of thousands left homeless on Lombok by the magnitude 7.0 quake on Sunday evening.
The military said five planes carrying food, medicine, blankets, field tents and water tankers left Jakarta for the island early on Wednesday.
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‘Ghost towns’
Earlier in the day, Nugroho said at a news conference that 131 people were confirmed dead, up from 105 announced on Tuesday.
He said reports of other deaths still had to be verified.
Nearly 2,500 people have been hospitalized with serious injuries and more than 156,000 people are displaced due to the extensive damage to thousands of homes. Thousands of people have been sleeping in makeshift shelters or out in the open.
Also on Wednesday, rescuers dug through the rubble of a mosque, hoping to reach the aunt of a sprinter who became a national hero last month at the under-20 world championships in Finland.
Salama, 52, was at a prayer class in the mosque of Karangpangsor village when the quake struck the tropical holiday island on Sunday evening, killing more than 100 people and leaving thousands homeless as buildings collapsed.
She is an aunt by marriage of Lalu Muhammad Zohri, who just over a year ago could barely afford running shoes and was hardly known outside his family’s village.
The 18-year-old became a household name almost overnight in July, when he won the 100 meters gold at the World Junior Championships in Tampere, Finland. Now he carries the hopes of the Southeast Asian nation at the Asian Games it is preparing to host in the next few weeks.
He lives two doors from his aunt, Salama.
Rescuers used a mechanical digger to clear a jumble of metal rods and concrete beside the still-intact green dome of the mosque, but there have been no signs the woman was alive and relatives appeared to have lost hope.
“I come here in the morning and go back to the relief camp at night,” said Husni, another family member, as he watched the rescue effort. “Hopefully, now, with the arrival of heavy equipment, we can get her away remains back.”
About three-quarters of Lombok’s north has been without electricity since Sunday, officials said, and aid workers are finding some hamlets hard to reach because bridges and roads were torn up by the tremor.
“Teams are speaking of coming across ghost towns, villages that have essentially been abandoned,” Matthew Cochrane of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said in Geneva on Tuesday.
He added that 80 percent of buildings had been damaged or destroyed, with thousands displaced.
Thousands of tourists have left Lombok since Sunday, fearing further earthquakes, some on extra flights added by airlines and others on ferries to Bali.
Officials said close to 5,000 foreign and domestic tourists had been evacuated from the three Gili islands off the northwest coast of Lombok, where two people died.