Magnitude 7.7 Quake Off Indonesia’s Flores Island Kills 1, Forces Evacuations

A magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck off the Indonesian island of Flores early Saturday, killing at least one person and sending thousands of residents fleeing to higher ground after officials warned of a tsunami.

The quake was centered in the Flores Sea off the island’s northern coast, about 68 kilometers (42 miles) northwest of Ende, according to U.S. and Indonesian authorities. In Nagekeo regency, the area closest to the epicenter, AFP journalists saw people racing for higher ground as the sea suddenly pulled back — a possible sign of an approaching tsunami. The warning was later lifted, but residents were told not to return to damaged buildings because aftershocks could bring them down.

Yohanes Babo, 56, a Nagekeo resident, was at a market when the shaking started. “The shaking was strong. Thankfully, we were already outside the house,” he told AFP. “People were panicking, running here and there. We’re evacuating for the time being and trying to get to the hills.” His family, he said, was safe.

The quake was recorded at shallow depth, and strong aftershocks rattled the area, including one with a magnitude of 6.1. Emergency officials initially reported two deaths but later corrected the toll to one dead and four injured.

Rescue teams in Maumere, a town on Flores’s north coast about 2,500 kilometers (1,553 miles) east of Jakarta, were searching through rubble for trapped survivors. Lukas Lotar, who works in customer service at a local hospital, said patients ran out of the building as soon as the shaking began. “The earth suddenly started to shake and I panicked,” he told AFP. “Patients also fled the hospital, the jolt was big. I saw some walls were cracked.”

The affected area is mostly a patchwork of towns and villages with little to no high-rise construction, which may have kept the death toll lower than it might otherwise have been. The danger, however, is not new for Flores. A magnitude 7.7 quake in 1992 triggered a tsunami that killed around 2,500 people on the island.

Indonesia’s Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) originally warned of waves from 0.5 to 3 meters (1.6 to 9.8 feet) and urged people to move inland. The alert was later lifted, though the agency said it would keep monitoring sea levels. “We have ended [the tsunami warning] but we will keep monitoring the sea level,” Wijayanto, an agency official who goes by one name, told AFP.

Indonesia sits on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a vast zone of intense seismic activity stretching from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin. The archipelago has experienced some of the world’s most devastating earthquakes and tsunamis. The 2004 Indian Ocean disaster, triggered by a 9.1-magnitude quake off Sumatra, killed about 220,000 people in the region, including more than 170,000 in Indonesia. In 2018, a series of quakes on Lombok killed more than 550 people, and a 7.5-magnitude quake and tsunami near Palu on Sulawesi left more than 4,300 dead or missing.

The full scale of the damage remained unclear Saturday, as rescue crews continued to sift through debris in Maumere and other communities near the epicenter.