Woman pulled out of rubble after 2 days
PEMENANG: A woman was pulled alive from a collapsed building in Lombok yesterday, two days after a powerful earthquake that killed dozens, destroyed villages and left thousands of people homeless.
Nadia Revanale, 23, was shopping in a minimart here at the time of the tremor, the second major quake to rock the island in a week. Neighbours heard cries for help from the mangled concrete and alerted rescuers, who took four hours to extract her.
“First we used our hands to clear the debris, then hammers, chisels and machines to slowly remove the pieces,” said Marcos Eric, a volunteer worker from a mining company, after an ambulance had taken the woman away.
“It took many hours but we’re thankful it worked and this person was found alive.”
It was a rare moment of joy since the earthquake struck, killing at least 98 people, including two on the neighbouring island of Bali to the west.
Lombok had been hit by a 6.4 earthquake on July 29 that killed 17 people and briefly stranded hundreds of trekkers on the slopes of a volcano.
Quakes continued to rattle the island, including a 5.5 magnitude tremor at 2am, the meteorology and geophysics agency (BMKG) said.
More than 230 aftershocks were recorded by yesterday morning, BMKG data showed.
Thousands of tourists have left Lombok since Sunday evening.
Officials said more than 2,000 people had been evacuated from the three Gili islands off the northwest coast of Lombok, where fears of a tsunami spread soon after the quake.
Indonesian Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas) said on Twitter it had rescued more than 3,000 people from the Gilis by Monday evening and many more were yet to be evacuated.
Saffron Amis, a British student on Gili Trawangan — the largest of the islands that are fringed by white beaches and surrounded by turquoise sea — said there were at least 200 people stranded there and others were still arriving from the other two, Gili Air and Gili Meno.
“We still have no Wi-Fi and very little power. Gili Air has run out of food and water, so they have come to us,” she said.