Thousands of survivors on the Indonesian island of Flores remained without aid on Monday, the country’s 81st Independence Day, as the death toll from a powerful weekend earthquake rose to at least 54 and rescue teams pressed on through communities cut off by landslides and debris.
The magnitude-7.7 quake struck East Nusa Tenggara province at a depth of 10 kilometers (six miles) shortly before 6 a.m. Saturday, sending residents fleeing in panic as tsunami warnings were briefly issued and later lifted. A magnitude-5.9 aftershock hit the region on Monday, one of at least 995 aftershocks recorded since the initial tremor, though only 46 were felt by residents.
More than 1,300 homes were damaged across the province, with nearly 250 destroyed on Flores alone. Some 5,000 people were forced into temporary shelters and 135 were injured, the National Disaster Management Agency said. The provincial governor declared a 14-day state of emergency on Sunday.
Rescue teams recovered six more bodies over the weekend as many of the thousands of displaced people spent nights camped outside collapsed homes under tarpaulin tents, wary of returning indoors amid the continuing aftershocks.
Witnesses described widespread devastation across the island, with fallen trees blocking roads, boulders hurled downslope by landslides, and homes left shattered or heavily damaged. Parked cars were crushed beneath buildings that gave way during the quake.
The disaster overshadowed national Independence Day observances, with many residents mourning victims, searching for missing relatives and waiting for supplies to reach isolated villages. Aid shortages have raised fears of hunger in areas still severed from relief routes.
Flores, a predominantly Catholic island in Muslim-majority Indonesia, sits within the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a zone of intense seismic and volcanic activity where the archipelago nation regularly experiences powerful earthquakes. The country of more than 270 million people has endured a series of destructive tremors in recent years, including events across its southern regions.
For many on Flores, the weekend disaster revived painful memories of a 1992 earthquake and tsunami that struck the island and killed roughly 2,500 people.
Authorities are continuing search-and-rescue operations while working to restore access to affected communities and distribute emergency supplies. The toll could rise further as teams reach areas that have remained unreachable since the quake struck.