A magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck off the north coast of Flores before dawn on Saturday, killing at least 47 people, according to Indonesia's National Disaster Management Agency. Another 50 were injured.
The United States Geological Survey put the epicentre 68 kilometres north-northwest of Ende, in East Nusa Tenggara province, at a depth of 10 kilometres. The quake hit at 5.58am local time. More than 500,000 people on Flores experienced very strong shaking, on the agency's modelling.
Indonesia's meteorology, climatology and geophysics agency issued a tsunami alert two minutes and 16 seconds after the rupture, covering 22 areas across four provinces: East Nusa Tenggara, West Nusa Tenggara, South Sulawesi and Southeast Sulawesi. The largest wave measured was 1.61 metres at Reok in Manggarai regency. Maurole district recorded 0.94 metres and Labuan Bajo 0.30 metres. The alert was withdrawn later that morning.
Manggarai and East Manggarai regencies took the worst of the deaths. About 2,000 people in Nagekeo regency, the district closest to the epicentre, left their homes for temporary shelters after the alert went out.
Getting to Nagekeo has been the problem since. Landslides closed the roads and cut communications, and rescue teams had not reached the regency by Saturday night. The disaster agency deployed three helicopters and a rescue vessel to work around the blockages.
The agency counted 346 damaged homes, 157 of them destroyed, along with 87 education facilities, 18 health facilities, five places of worship and six government offices. The presidential assistance program distributed 50,000 food packages.
More than 230 aftershocks followed through Saturday, the strongest at magnitude 6.2. A separate magnitude 6.9 quake struck off Sumatra later the same day at a depth of about 172 kilometres, with no reported casualties or damage.
Australia had personnel working with the same Indonesian agencies a fortnight earlier. Pacific Partnership 2026, a disaster response exercise that ran at Sibolga in North Sumatra from 20 July to 1 August, brought 113 specialists from Australia, Canada, Germany and the United States together with BNPB, the national search and rescue agency Basarnas and four Indonesian ministries. HMAS Choules supported the exercise. "Australia and Indonesia have a long history of helping each other when needed," the Chief of Joint Operations, Vice Admiral Justin Jones, said at the time.
Flores sits on the Ring of Fire and the archipelago records large quakes regularly. Officials expect the toll to rise as teams reach the districts that are still cut off.
