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Death Toll from Powerful Quake that Rocks Indonesia's Lombok Island Now at 91

by VOA News

   At least 91 people are now confirmed dead from Sunday's powerful
   earthquake that rocked the Indonesian island of Lombok, triggering a
   brief tsunami warning and sending residents and tourists fleeing into
   the streets.

   Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for the country's National Disaster
   Mitigation Agency, told reporters Monday that most of the victims were
   on the northern side of Lombok, which sustained massive damage.

   Nugroho says the death toll is expected to rise as search and rescue
   crews reach more affected areas.

   The quake, recorded at magnitude 7.0 by the U.S. Geological Survey,
   struck at a depth of 10.5 kilometers in the northern part of Lombok. It
   was also felt on the neighboring island of Bali, Sumbawa and parts of
   East Java.

   Electricity was knocked out in several parts of the city and patients
   were evacuated from the main hospital, witnesses and officials said.

   Singapore Law and Home Affairs [1]Minister K. Shanmugam, who was in the
   Lombok town of Mataram at the time of the quake, posted pictures of the
   destruction on his Facebook page and said his 10th-floor hotel room
   shook violently and walls cracked.

   "It was quite impossible to stand up. Heard screams," he wrote. "Came
   out, and made my way down a staircase, while building was still
   shaking. Power went out for a while. Lots of cracks, fallen doors."

   Mutya Aryani, a local resident in Sumbawa, told VOA by phone, "Most of
   people were at the mosque when the earthquake happened. People ran to
   the street and a large field outside the mosque. We're still
   traumatized by the previous earthquake a few days ago which was also
   quite large."

   Last week, 17 people were killed when a 6.4-magnitude earthquake hit
   Lombok.

   Like Bali, Lombok is known for its pristine beaches and mountains.

   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
   Ocean Basin. In December 2004, a magnitude-9.1 earthquake off Sumatra
   island triggered a tsunami that killed 230,000 people in a dozen
   countries.

   VOA's Indonesia service contributed to this report.

References

   1. https://www.facebook.com/k.shanmugam.page/