Quake could not shake imam’s faith
‘I am crying... he did not even flinch, even though it is allowed to leave during an earthquake’
Avideo of an Indonesian imam stoically reciting evening prayers in Bali as a deadly earthquake struck neighbouring Lombok has gone viral on social media, with internet users praising him for his unwavering faith.
The imam was preaching on Sunday night at a mosque in Denpasar on the holiday island of Bali when the shallow 6.9-magnitude earthquake struck.
Footage of the imam, recorded on a cellphone, showed him supporting himself against the wall as the room shook violently around him and as some congregants fled the building.
The powerful quake killed at least 98 people and damaged thousands of buildings in Lombok. A number of mosques on that island have collapsed with the faithful inside them.
“I am crying... he did not even flinch, even though it is allowed to leave your prayer during an earthquake,” said Indonesian cleric Yousuf Mansur, who shared the clip to his two million followers on Instagram.
Rescuers used diggers and heavy machinery to clear debris and search for survivors yesterday after a magnitude 6.9 earthquake killed at least 98 people on Indonesia’s resort island of Lombok, prompting an exodus of tourists.
The National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) said it expected the death toll to rise once the rubble of more than 13,000 flattened and damaged houses was cleared away after the second powerful quake in a week.
Power and communications were severed in some areas, with landslides and a collapsed bridge blocking access to areas around the quake epicentre in the north — forcing rescue teams to bring in the heavy machinery.
The military said it would send a ship with medical aid, supplies and logistics support.
Indonesia sits on the geologically active Pacific Ring of Fire and is regularly hit by earthquakes. In 2004, the Indian Ocean tsunami killed 226,000 people in 13 countries, including more than 120,000 in Indonesia.
Scramble for boats
Officials said more than 2,000 people had been evacuated from the three Gili islands off the northwest coast of Lombok, where fears of another tsunami spread among tourists.
Michelle Thompson, an American holidaying on one of the Gilis, described a “scramble” to get on boats leaving for the main island during which her husband was injured.
“People were just throwing their suitcases on board and I had to struggle to get my husband on, because he was bleeding,” she said.
Ambulances with sirens blaring raced along the coast from north Lombok, but BNPB spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said emergency units in its hospitals were overflowing and some patients were being treated in parking lots.
The main hospital in the town of Tanjung in the north was severely damaged, so staff set up about 30 beds in the shade of trees and in a tent on a field to tend to the injured.
A boy with a heavily bandaged leg wailed in pain, an elderly man wore a splint improvised from cardboard strips of cardboard on a broken arm, and some hurt by falling debris still had dried blood on their faces. The Indonesian Agency for Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics (BMKG) said more than 120 aftershocks were recorded after Sunday evening’s quake.
Lombok had already been hit on July 29 by a 6.4 magnitude quake that killed 17 people and briefly stranded several hundred trekkers on the slopes of a volcano.
At magnitude 6.9, Sunday’s quake released more than five times the energy of the earlier one, the United States Geological Survey website said.
The tremor was powerful enough to be felt on the neighbouring island of Bali where, BNPB said, two people died.
The first quake was also felt on Bali.
Despite it being a popular tourist destination, no foreigners were recorded among the dead, BNPB spokesman Nugroho told a news conference. Some 236 people were injured.