A strong quake on Lombok Island of Indonesia killed at least 14 people on Sunday and injured over 160. This place is quite a popular tourist locale close to Bali according to officials.
This earthquake damaged more than 1,000 houses and was felt in a wider area including Bali where no damage or casualties were reported. The U.S. Geological Survey mentioned that the quake struck at a depth of only 4.4 miles.
Shallow earthquakes tend to cause more damage than the deeper ones.
East Lombok district was the hardest hit with 10 deaths including a Malaysian tourist, as per Sutopo Purwo Nugroho who was a spokesman for Indonesia’s Disaster Mitigation Agency.
The number of casualties is likely to increase as data was still collected from various other locations on the island.
At least 162 people were injured including 67 who were hospitalized with serious injuries as per Nugroho.
The quake caused blackouts in East Lombok and North Lombok districts and triggered a large landslide from Mount Rinjani, an active volcano.
Rescuers were evacuating more than 800 tourists from the mountain.
In East Lombok and the provincial capital of Mataram, the quake lasted about 10 seconds, causing residents to flee their homes onto streets and fields, Nugroho said. He said most of the fatalities and injuries were caused by falling slabs of concrete.
Television footage showed residents remaining outside, fearing aftershocks, as the injured were being treated on mattresses taken out of their partially damaged houses and patients were wheeled out of a hospital.
Eka Fathurrahman, the police chief in East Lombok, said the Malaysian woman who died was part of a group of 18 Malaysian tourists who had just visited Mount Rinjani when the quake jolted their guesthouse and toppled a concrete wall. Six other people were injured at the guesthouse.
Fathurrahman said many injured people who were treated outside a damaged clinic were evacuated to the main hospital farther away after more ambulances reached the devastated location in East Lombok’s Sembalun village.
Like Bali, Lombok is known for pristine beaches and mountains. Hotels and other buildings in both locations are not allowed to exceed the height of coconut trees.
Indonesia is prone to earthquakes due to its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific Basin. In December 2004, a massive magnitude 9.1 earthquake off Sumatra triggered a tsunami that killed 230,000 people in a dozen countries.
