BFF-74 Lombok quake leaves 156,000 homeless as death toll hits 131

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Lombok quake leaves 156,000 homeless as death toll hits 131

TANJUNG (WEST NUSA TENGGARA), Indonesia, Aug 8, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – The death
toll from a powerful earthquake on the Indonesian island of Lombok rose above
130 on Wednesday, as authorities appealed for food, clean water and medical
help for some 156,000 people forced from their homes.

Many frightened, displaced villagers are staying under tents or tarpaulins
dotted along roads or in parched rice fields, and makeshift medical
facilities have been set up to treat the injured.

Evacuees in some encampments say they are running out of food, while others
are suffering psychological trauma after the 6.9-magnitude quake, which
struck just one week after another tremor surged through the island and
killed 17.

“We still need long-term aid, even though we have already received help
from various (regional) governments,” national disaster agency spokesman
Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said.

Around 1,477 people were severely injured in the disaster, with tens of
thousands of homes damaged, and authorities say the toll of 131 is likely to
rise.

Workers with heavy machinery are searching the rubble of homes, schools and
mosques, with hope of finding any survivors fading.

“The corpses are starting to smell and we believe some people buried are
still alive — that’s why it’s a critical time,” Nugroho said.

Local authorities, international relief groups and the central government
have begun organising aid, but shattered roads have slowed efforts to reach
survivors in the mountainous north and east of Lombok, which bore the brunt
of the quake.

Muhammad Zainul Majdi, governor of the West Nusa Tenggara region which
covers Lombok, said there was a dire need for medical staff, food and
medicine in the worst-hit places.

Hundreds of bloodied and bandaged victims have been treated outside damaged
hospitals in the island’s main city of Mataram and other badly affected
areas.

“We have limited human resources. Some paramedics have to be at the
shelters, some need to be mobile,” Majdi told AFP.

“The scale of this quake is massive for us here in West Nusa Tenggara, this
is our first experience.”

Some evacuees are grappling with the traumatic scenes of death and
destruction that accompanied the quake.

“I saw my neighbour get stuck in the rubble and die. He asked me for help,
but I couldn’t help him, we just ran to help ourselves,” Johriah, who like
many Indonesians goes by one name, told AFP tearfully.

– ‘Destruction almost 100 percent’ –

The Indonesian Red Cross said it had set up 10 mobile clinics in the north
of the island.

A field hospital has also been established near an evacuation centre
catering to more than 500 people in the village of Tanjung.

Kurniawan Eko Wibowo, a doctor at the field hospital, said most patients
had broken bones and head injuries.

“We lack the infrastructure to perform operations because (they) need to be
performed in a sterile place,” Wibowo told AFP.

Across much of the island, a popular tourist destination, once-bustling
villages have been turned into virtual ghost towns.

“In some villages we visited the destruction was almost 100 percent, all
houses collapsed, roads are cracked and bridges were broken,” said Arifin
Muhammad Hadi, a spokesman for the Indonesian Red Cross.

Many farmers were reluctant to move far from their damaged homes and leave
precious livestock behind, he added.

The Indonesian military said that three Hercules transporter planes packed
with food, medication, blankets, tents and water tanks had arrived in Lombok.

The West Sumatra government has donated one tonne of its most famous
culinary export, beef rendang — a slow-cooked coconut curry.

– ‘We have no clean water’ –

But some evacuees have complained of being ignored or experiencing long
delays for supplies to arrive at shelters.

“There has been no help at all here,” said 36-year-old Multazam, staying
with hundreds of others under tarpaulins on a dry paddy field outside West
Pemenang village.

“We have no clean water, so if we want to go to the toilet we use a small
river nearby,” he said, adding they needed food, bedding and medicine.

At an orphanage in West Lombok, some 80 children — including a one-year-
old — were huddling under two large tents after their dorms were destroyed.

“We still have supplies for the next few days, but I’m not sure about after
that,” Billa Rabbani, a spokeswoman from the Peduli Anak orphanage, told AFP.

The quake struck as evening prayers were being said across the Muslim-
majority island and there are fears that one collapsed mosque in north Lombok
had been filled with worshippers.

Rescuers have found three bodies and also managed to pull one man alive
from the twisted wreckage of the mosque, reduced to a pile of concrete and
metal bars, with its towering green dome folded in on itself.

Meanwhile, the evacuation of tourists from the Gili Islands — three tiny,
coral-fringed tropical islands off the northwest coast of Lombok — has
finished, officials said.

BSS/AFP/MRI/1737 hrs