Tourist exodus as quake toll hits 105

Appeal for help made after 20,000 people left homeless

MATARAM, Indonesia - Terrified holidaymakers rushed for boats and planes to leave Indonesia's Lombok island on Tuesday after it suffered a second deadly quake within a week, as rescuers scrambled to reach remote areas where survivors are in urgent need of food and shelter.

The shallow magnitude 6.9 quake killed at least 105 people and destroyed thousands of buildings in Lombok on Sunday.

Rescuers on Tuesday resumed the desperate search for survivors, and to recover the bodies of victims in the rubble of houses, mosques and schools destroyed in the latest disaster.

More than 20,000 people are believed to have been made homeless on Lombok as the quake brought down or damaged about 13,000 houses, with 236 severely injured, and authorities have appealed for more medical personnel and basic supplies.

The tremor struck as evening prayers were being held across the Muslim-majority island.

Emergency crews using heavy equipment to search through a collapsed mosque in northern Lombok and managed to pull one man alive from the twisted wreckage.

Video shot by a soldier shows rescuers shouting "Thank God" as a man is pulled from a space under the mosque's flattened roof sometime on Monday and he staggers away from the ruins supported by soldiers.

"You're safe, mister," says one of the soldiers as emotion overcomes the man, clad in Islamic robes, and villagers crowd around him.

Extra flights

Disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said he hopes "a lot" of people can be saved from the mosque. Two people were rescued from the building on Monday including a woman with a broken leg, said villager Supri Yono, and three were found dead.

"We're forced to deal with broken bones in the traditional way at home because the hospital had to deal with hundreds of other injuries," said Budhiawan, the head of Lading-Lading village.

Thousands of tourists have left Lombok since Sunday evening, fearing further earthquakes, some on extra flights that were laid on by airlines and some on ferries to Bali.

French tourist Laurent Smadja, who had been on Gilli Meno, the smallest of the three islands, described scenes of chaos and confusion in the aftermath of the quake as holidaymakers jostled to leave.

"We had no electricity and no information about what to do. We saw everybody leaving in boats but no boat came to us," he said.

On Tuesday he eventually managed to board a boat with locals and head to nearby Lombok. He made his way to the airport, where hundreds of holidaymakers slept on the floor overnight awaiting flights out.

An official at the airport said the airlines opened ticket counters for the tourists wishing to immediately leave Lombok. The airport was now also opened 24 hours to serve flights for foreign tourists.

He added Indonesian airlines provided five extra flights bound to Bali, Jakarta and Surabaya for them on Monday with more flights from Lombok having been planned in the following days.

Indonesian Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas) said on Twitter it had rescued more than 3,000 people from the Gilis by Monday evening and many more were yet to be evacuated.

"Thousands more, tourists and hotel workers, are still in the process of being evacuated out of the three island," the disaster mitigation agency said in a statement on Monday evening.

Afp - Ap - Xinhua

(China Daily 08/08/2018 page11)