‘One minute slower and we’d both be dead’
As Indonesian earthquake toll rises, British tourists tell of chaotic scenes in the rush to leave the holiday islands
‘Most terrifying was the later tsunami warning. Locals were screaming and putting on life jackets’
BRITISH tourists have described their terrifying escape from a magnitude 7 earthquake that struck the Indonesian islands of Lombok and Bali on Sunday evening, killing at least 98 people.
Amid chaotic scenes, thousands of people, including many foreign tourists, were still waiting to be evacuated from the worst affected areas of Lombok last night.
An estimated 20,000 are now homeless and more than 200 injured, with some being treated out in the open, next to damaged hospitals. Dozens are feared to be still trapped under a mosque in Lading-lading that collapsed during evening prayers.
Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, the national disaster agency spokesman, tweeted a video of the ruins, telling reporters that the death toll across the earthquake zone was expected to rise.
Among the tourists who had a narrow escape was Hannah Small from Bournemouth, who told The Daily Telegraph how she had been in the bathroom in her hotel in Ubud, Bali, when the walls began to sway.
“I was in the bath, and the whole room started shaking. Parts of our ceiling were falling down,” she said.
“My partner grabbed me out of the bath with a towel, and we ran down three flights of stairs to reach the ground floor. Once the quake was over, everyone was scared to go back to their bedrooms.”
Ms Small was able to leave yesterday for Singapore. However, tourists and locals in Lombok, particularly in the less accessible Gili Islands, host to popular diving resorts off the coast, faced a traumatic evacuation.
Mr Sutopo said 2,700 tourists had been removed from the islands so far. But many remained trapped for a second night outside.
“We’re still trying to get back to Bali from Lombok. There’s a lot of scared and battered people around,” tourist Becky Morris tweeted last night.
Helen Brady, 29, a writer from Manchester, said she and boyfriend James Kelsall, 28, narrowly escaped after the earthquake on Gili Trawangan brought buildings crashing down. She told the Press Association: “All the lights went out and most buildings [were] demolished. If we’d have been one minute slower, we’d have been dead or, at the very least, severely injured.”
Mr Kelsall, a teacher from Woodford Green, London, said: “Most terrifying was the tsunami warning that followed. Locals were frantically running, screaming, putting on life jackets. We followed them to higher ground.”
Throughout the day, dramatic footage emerged of frightened crowds jostling on palm-fringed beaches for a limited number of rescue boats.
Helen Milne from Oxfordshire told the BBC that her daughter, Laura, was trapped on Gili Trawangan: “They are stuck on the island and are reporting rioting and fighting. People can’t get on boats. There’s no water, no food, the shops have been ransacked.”
Mads and Tanni Jacobsen, from Denmark, told of panic as they tried to escape from Gili Air with their two children, Alma, three, and Signe, 11. The family had spent Sunday night sheltering with locals in a school, petrified by conflicting tsunami reports. Ms Jacobsen, a nurse, had helped treat the injured before the family joined those awaiting rescue on the beach. “We stood in line and waited for two hours. Everyone was shoving, swimming with life jackets to catch the boat,” said Mr Jacobsen. They are now at Lombok’s main airport, sleeping on floors with hundreds of other tourists.
Fears are rising for residents of the north of the island, a more residential and less developed area close to the epicentre which is difficult for rescue teams to reach on damaged roads.
Endri Susanto, who runs a relief organisation, told CNN he had found a “totally broken” hospital in the north.
“About 80 per cent of the buildings had fallen down or collapsed,” he said of the surrounding area.