Magnitude 7.7 Quake Strikes Indonesia's Flores Region, Killing at Least 40
A magnitude 7.7 earthquake off Indonesia's Flores coast killed at least 40 people and injured dozens, triggering panic and displacement.
A powerful earthquake struck off the coast of Indonesia's Flores region early Saturday morning, leaving at least 40 people dead and dozens more injured, according to rescue officials. The quake, which hit at 5:58 a.m. local time, had a magnitude of 7.7 and a depth of 10 kilometers, the U.S. Geological Survey reported.
The epicenter was located 68 kilometers north-northwest of the city of Ende in East Nusa Tenggara province. The country's meteorological agency recorded 235 aftershocks by Saturday afternoon, with the largest reaching a magnitude of 6.2.
Fathur Rahman, head of the National Search and Rescue Agency, said rescuers recovered at least 40 bodies, mostly in the three hardest-hit regencies of Sikka, Manggarai, and East Manggarai. Around 50 injured people were transported to hospitals for treatment.
In Labuhan Bajo, tents were set up outside Siloam Hospital to treat the injured. Among those receiving care was Chen Jin, a Chinese tourist living in Japan, who was bandaged for a leg injury. He described the experience as the biggest earthquake he had ever felt, surpassing any he had encountered in Japan.
More than 2,000 villagers in the Nagekeo regency fled their homes and moved to temporary shelters as a precaution.
Indonesia, an archipelago of over 17,000 islands, sits on the Pacific "Ring of Fire," a zone of intense seismic and volcanic activity. The region has a history of devastating quakes, including a 1992 tremor on Flores that killed around 2,500 people and a 2018 quake that triggered a tsunami and claimed over 4,400 lives. In 2004, a massive magnitude 9.1 earthquake off Sumatra generated a tsunami that killed 230,000 people across a dozen countries.