Death toll rose to 82 after a magnitude 6.9 in richter scale earthquake rocked the Indonesian island of Lombok and on nearby Bali on Sunday, damaging buildings, sending terrified residents and tourists running into the streets and triggering a brief tsunami warning.
Social media posts from the scene showed debris piled on streets and sidewalks. Hospital patients, many still in their beds, were rolled out onto streets as a safeguard against structural damage to the hospital buildings.
“Back in the house now. That was an attention getter,” tweeted @Bali_chris. “Strongest quake we’ve felt in the 13 years we’ve been here. Much stronger than the last one in Lombok that we felt in Bali. Hope everyone in Lombok is safe.”
The latest quake had a magnitude of 6.9 on ritcher scale and struck just 10 km underground according to the US Geological Survey.
Immediate after quake Indonesian Officials issued a tsunami warning and urged people to move away from the ocean.
“Please go to a place with higher ground, while remaining calm and not panicking,” Dwikorita Karnawati, head of the agency for meteorology, climatology and geophysics, told local TV.
Residents in Lombok’s main city Mataram described a strong jolt that sent people scrambling out of buildings.
“Everyone immediately ran out of their homes, everyone is panicking,” Iman, a local resident in Mataram, told .
The tremor came a week after a shallow 6.4-magnitude quake hit the island, killing 17 people and damaging hundreds of buildings.
It triggered landslides that briefly trapped trekkers on popular mountain hiking routes.
Indonesia, one of the most disaster-prone nations on earth, straddles the so-called Pacific “Ring of Fire”, where tectonic plates collide and many of the world’s volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur.
In 2004 a tsunami triggered by a magnitude 9.3 undersea earthquake off the coast of Sumatra in western Indonesia killed 220,000 people in countries around the Indian Ocean, including 168,000 in Indonesia.
It is reported Hundreds of tourists remained stranded Monday on a mountain in Indonesia after a large earthquake struck an island near the popular tourist destination of Bali a day earlier, officials said.
More than 500 hikers from 26 countries were stuck on Mount Rinjani on Lombok island after the 6.9 magnitude earthquake triggered a landslide, Sky News reported.
Military officials said more than 250 people had reached a relief point on the mountain by Monday afternoon, and a team of rescuers had reached hundreds more near the crater lake.
Indonesia’s president, Joko Widodo, visited the area on Monday and promised money for people who had lost their homes.
