Approximately 5,000 individuals have been relocated following a powerful magnitude-7.7 earthquake that struck eastern Indonesia, resulting in a minimum of 53 casualties, road blockages, and landslides, as per authorities’ reports on Sunday. Over 130 individuals sustained injuries, many of them with fractured bones.
The earthquake that occurred on Saturday was the deadliest in the Southeast Asian country since a quake in 2022 claimed hundreds of lives in West Java. The disaster mitigation agency BNPB indicated that more than 3,300 individuals in the Sikka region either self-evacuated or sought refuge in a sports arena.
In the aftermath of the quake, some residents of Sikka found themselves stranded outside collapsed residences, seeking shelter under makeshift tarps. Abdul Mutas, 63, recounted how he and his family fled to safety as the tide rose, leaving them with nothing but their bodies for protection.
Simon Subandi, the deputy regent of Sikka, reported that nearly all residents preferred to sleep outdoors on porches or makeshift shelters due to fears of aftershocks. The government responded by deploying over 3,500 military and police personnel to the affected area.
Concerns about aftershocks lingered among residents in Maumere, where a closed port displayed signs of the earthquake’s impact. The disaster agency registered close to 1,000 aftershocks following the main quake, prompting hundreds of locals to seek refuge in a designated sports stadium.
Search and rescue operations are ongoing in the hardest-hit areas to locate any individuals possibly trapped under rubble. The power supply has been largely restored, although efforts to repair distribution lines are still underway. An emergency has been declared for the entire East Nusa Tenggara province to facilitate the mobilization of resources and funding.
Geology expert Dwikorita Karnawati highlighted the region’s earthquake vulnerability due to the “Flores back-arc thrust fault.” The quake-stricken area had previously experienced a destructive magnitude-7.5 earthquake in 1992, according to Indonesia’s geophysics agency. Indonesia, with its vast population spread across numerous islands, is situated within the seismically active “Pacific Ring of Fire,” where tectonic plate interactions frequently lead to earthquakes and volcanic activities.