At Kisol village a few hours away, Bertolomeus Tiga, 42, told AFP his house was one of several collapsed by the quake that also brought down part of the local church.<\/p>\n
Rescuers working amid the rubble of a damaged building after an earthquake in Maumere, East Nusa Tenggara. Photo \/ Handout, Indonesia’s National Search And Rescue Agency (BASARNAS), AFP<\/p>\n
\u201cThe police came yesterday and collected all the data, but there\u2019s no aid yet. The most important thing is probably staple foods. Food and drink … medicine,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Bertolomeus said villagers were afraid to return to compromised homes and buildings.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the time being, we\u2019re still taking refuge outside. We\u2019re still living outside.\u201d<\/p>\n
Widespread damage <\/p>\n
The head of Indonesia\u2019s BNPB national disaster agency, Suharyanto, said at least five helicopters, several planes, a naval vessel and search and rescue ships were on their way to help.<\/p>\n
The agency upped the death toll late Sunday to 53 from 47 the day before, with 135 people injured.<\/p>\n
There were no reports of missing persons.<\/p>\n
Survivors urgenly neededemergency tents, food, medicines, blankets, camp beds, mats, clean water and electricity generators, rescue officials said.<\/p>\n
The epicentre of the shallow quake was located just off the north coast of the island, geological authorities said.<\/p>\n
The affected areas have few, if any, high-rise buildings.<\/p>\n
BNPB spokesman Berton Suar Pelita Panjaitan said at least 914 houses on the island were severely damaged and hundreds of others to a lesser degree.<\/p>\n
Dozens of public buildings were also affected, including 93 educational and 36 health facilities and 38 government offices.<\/p>\n
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said preparations were underway on Saturday to bring aid to thousands in temporary shelters.<\/p>\n
The Government sent 50,000 aid packages weighing a total of 275 tonnes to the area, and European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen offered help from the bloc\u2019s Copernicus Earth observation satellites.<\/p>\n
\u2018Ring of Fire\u2019 <\/p>\n
In Ruteng, a town about 200km from the worst-hit part of the island, AFP saw heavy machinery clearing rubble from the street on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The local hospital had been badly damaged, and patients were evacuated to tents erected outside.<\/p>\n
A woman underwent an emergency C-section in an intact storage room converted into a temporary operating theatre, hospital spokeswoman Yohana Raisita Damalia Mari said.<\/p>\n
Villagers look on after spending the night in an open field in Nangahale village in Sikka, East Nusa Tenggara. Photo \/ Arnold Welianto, AFP<\/p>\n
\u201cThank God, the surgery went smoothly and both the patient and her baby are safe,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Herybertus Geradus Laju Nabit, mayor of the Manggarai regency, told AFP it was impossible to predict when the aftershocks would end.<\/p>\n
\u201cTherefore, our first appeal is: be vigilant. Stay alert,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
After Saturday\u2019s quake, Flores residents ran for the hills as the sea retreated, a possible sign of an approaching tsunami.<\/p>\n
A tsunami warning was later lifted, but authorities urged people not to return to damaged buildings for fear that aftershocks may bring them down.<\/p>\n
Waves of up to 1.6m were reported in some coastal regions, according to Indonesia\u2019s BMKG geological agency.<\/p>\n
Indonesia experiences frequent earthquakes because of its location in the Pacific \u201cRing of Fire\u201d, an arc of intense seismic activity stretching from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.<\/p>\n
Flores was struck by a 7.7-magnitude earthquake in 1992 that triggered a tsunami and killed about 2500 people.<\/p>\n
A devastating 9.1-magnitude tremor in 2004 struck off the coast of Sumatra and triggered a tsunami that killed 220,000 throughout the region, about 170,000 of them in Indonesia.<\/p>\n
It was one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history.<\/p>\n
– AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At Kisol village a few hours away, Bertolomeus Tiga, 42, told AFP his house was one of several…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":572914,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[74,1884,113435,12683,8615,124,17153,6659,6183,6752,23966,273,282389,281031,5838,2273,24176,219819,20924,10933,2514,3375,111,139,69,384,17216,8206,147,2249,10809,2742],"class_list":["post-572913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-after","tag-aid","tag-await","tag-buildings","tag-come","tag-could","tag-damaged","tag-deadly","tag-dozens","tag-earthquake","tag-enough","tag-environment","tag-evacuees","tag-flores","tag-help","tag-houses","tag-hundreds","tag-indonesias","tag-indonesian","tag-injured","tag-island","tag-killed","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-people","tag-powerful","tag-quake","tag-science","tag-soon","tag-sunday","tag-thousands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=572913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572913\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/572914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}