Hunt for survivors as quake toll rises to 105
THE official death toll from the Lombok earthquake rose to 105 yesterday as rescuers tried to find survivors buried in homes, shops and mosques, and thousands of homeless families faced another night in the open.
House after house lay in a jagged mound of collapsed rafters and masonry on the jammed, damaged road to the north of the Indonesian island, close to the epicentre of Sunday’s shallow 6.9 magnitude quake.
Most of those killed were struck by falling debris and thousands are now too scared or simply unable to return to their destroyed homes, sheltering instead under tarpaulin tents in fields.
Muhammad Anwar from a village near Pemenang, north Lombok, told The Daily Telegraph: “Everybody in my family, we are all, thank God, fine. But my next door neighbours, all of them but one are severely injured, with broken bones all over their bodies.
“There was a little girl, my other neighbour, she died, crushed under the debris of her own house. Every house in my village, 40 families, all our homes, gone.”
Few buildings were left standing in Kayangan, where residents told Reuters that as many as 40 people had died.
In a rare piece of good news yesterday, a young woman was pulled alive from the wreckage of a grocery store.
Footage posted online also showed a man being extracted from the ruins of the Jabal Nur mosque in Lading-lading.
The man sobbed as one rescuer told him: “You’re safe, sir. You’re safe.”
The tremor struck as evening prayers were being said across the Muslim-majority island.
Rescuers have found three bodies but authorities fear that the mosque had been filled with as many as 40 worshippers.
The number of seriously injured people has now topped 230.
Sunday’s quake was the second strong tremor to rock the tropical island in a week. A 6.4 magnitude earthquake on July 29 killed 17 people.