Strong aftershock rattles deadly quake survivors
MATARAM, Indonesia — A strong aftershock struck Indonesia’s Lombok Thursday, causing panic among evacuees already traumatized by a devastating earthquake that killed more than 160 on the holiday island four days earlier.
The 5.9-magnitude quake struck at a shallow depth in the northwest of the island, the US Geological Survey said, even as relief agencies raced to find survivors among the wreckage from Sunday’s quake.
It was the strongest of some 355 aftershocks that have rattled the island since Sunday, national disaster agency spokesman SutopoPurwoNugroho said.
Evacuees at a shelter in northern Lombok’s Tanjung district ran out onto the road crying and screaming, an AFP reporter at the scene said.
Motorcycles parked on the street toppled over and the walls of some nearby buildings collapsed.
A woman wearing a motorbike helmet was seen crying with her two daughters in her arms.
“We were stuck in the traffic while delivering aid, suddenly it felt like our car was hit from behind, it was so strong,” witness Sri Laksmi told AFP.
“People in the street began to panic and got out of their cars, they ran in different directions in the middle of the traffic.”
The aftershock comes just four days after a devastating 6.9-magnitude earthquake struck Lombok, which relief agencies said had wiped out entire villages in the worst-hit regions in the north and west.
A total of 164 people were now confirmed dead in the quake, Nugroho told AFP, with a further 1,400 seriously injured and more than 150,000 displaced.
State-run news agency Antara reported overnight 347 had been killed by the quake, but Nugroho said the tally was incomplete and unverified.
However, he said Thursday the “death toll has jumped significantly”, without providing further details.
Local authorities, international relief groups and the central government have begun organising aid, but shattered roads have slowed efforts to reach survivors in the mountainous north of Lombok, which bore the brunt of the quake.
Aid begun trickling into some of the most isolated regions, officials said midday Thursday, but many people displaced by the quake still lack basic supplies.
In some parts of northern Lombok, survivors can be seen standing on the road with cardboard boxes asking for donations and food.
“We are still waiting for assessments from some of the more remote areas in the north of the island, but it is already clear that Sunday’s earthquake was exceptionally destructive,” Christopher Rassi, the head of a Red Cross assessment team on Lombok, said in a statement.
“I visited villages yesterday that were completely collapsed.”