Rescuers Race to Find Survivors as Indonesia Quake Toll Hits 38

Bangla Press Desk:  Rescuers combed through debris for survivors after a powerful earthquake struck off Indonesia's Flores Island on Saturday, killing at least 38 people, according to a disaster official.

Suharyanto, head of Indonesia's national disaster mitigation agency, said 13 people were injured, two of them seriously."Victims are trapped in several buildings," said Suharyanto, who like many Indonesians uses one name.

"These will be the initial targets of the disaster response teams," he told a news conference, adding that two helicopters and a plane were being readied to assist in rescue operations.

European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen offered help from the bloc's Copernicus Earth observation satellites.

"Europe stands ready to deploy Copernicus, our eyes in the sky, to support search and rescue efforts. Indonesia, we stand with you," she wrote on X.

Dozens of houses and other buildings were damaged when the 7.7-magnitude quake hit the popular tourist island in Indonesia's east.

Suharyanto said about 2,000 people had evacuated.

"I have never felt an earthquake this big," Yulian Juita Ekalia, who lives in Ruteng city more than 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of the epicentre, told AFP by telephone.

"It felt like we were on a trampoline; it was really scary," said the 37-year-old university lecturer, who was jolted awake at around 5:30 am (2130 GMT on Friday).

"As I rushed to get outside, everything in the house fell down: the television, my son's trophies, the dish racks, suitcases on top of the wardrobes. When I got outside, my son and neighbours were already there, screaming in fear."

Rescue official Fathur Rahman told AFP the focus has shifted to locating victims who may be buried under rubble, but rescue efforts have been complicated by landslides cutting off roads.

Residents in Nagekeo, an area close to the epicentre, raced for higher ground as the sea retreated early Saturday -- a possible sign of an approaching tsunami, AFP journalists witnessed.

While a tsunami warning was lifted, authorities urged people not to return to damaged buildings for fear that aftershocks may bring them down.

Hundreds remained outside by lunchtime as dozens of aftershocks continued shaking the island, the strongest measured at a magnitude of 6.1.

- Fleeing in panic -

Yulian said she had dragged her stove outside and was cooking there, fearing further tremors.

Outside a nearby hospital, she said she saw patients being treated under emergency tents.

Seeing images online of her university badly damaged, Yulian said she was "grateful that the quake happened on a Saturday morning when there was no campus activity... I can't imagine what it would have been like if it happened while we were all there."

Nagekeo resident Yohanes Babo, 56, said he was at a market when the earth started shaking in the early morning.

"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," he said.The epicentre of the shallow quake was located just off the north coast of the island, US and Indonesian authorities said.

The extent of the damage is still being assessed. The area is largely rural with few, if any, high-rise buildings.

Long queues of people were seen evacuating on foot, by motorbike and car, some piled into the back of pickup trucks, after the initial tsunami warning issued by Indonesia's Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency.

Indonesia experiences frequent earthquakes due to its location in the Pacific "Ring of Fire", an arc of intense seismic activity stretching from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.

Flores was struck by a 7.7-magnitude earthquake in 1992, which triggered a tsunami and resulted in around 2,500 deaths.

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, in one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history.