LADING-LADING, Indonesia — Soldiers have pulled a man alive from the rubble of a large mosque flattened by an earthquake on the Indonesian island of Lombok, while thousands of homeless locals waited for aid Tuesday and stranded tourists camped at beaches and in the lobbies of damaged hotels.
The north of Lombok has been devastated by the magnitude 7.0 quake that struck Sunday night, killing at least 105 people, seriously injuring more than 230 and destroying thousands of buildings. Two days after the quake, rescuers were still struggling to reach all the affected areas and authorities expected the death toll to rise.
Disaster officials have not said how many people they believe are buried beneath the ruins of the Jabal Nur mosque in Lading-Lading but the village head, Budhiawan, said about 30, based on unclaimed belongings left outside the mosque.
Muhamad Juanda, who narrowly escaped, said 100 people were inside praying when the earth began to roll. Many got out but dozens were trapped, he said.
Video shot sometime Monday by a soldier showed rescuers shouting “Thank God” as a man was pulled from a space under the mosque’s flattened roof and staggered away from the ruins supported by soldiers.
“You’re safe, mister,” said one of the soldiers as emotion overcame the man, clad in Islamic robes, and villagers crowded around him.
Disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said he hopes “a lot” of people can be saved from the mosque. Two people were rescued from the debris Monday including a woman with a broken leg, said villager Supri Yono, and three were found dead.
Rescuers were using heavy-duty cutting equipment on Tuesday to pry apart the tangled debris.
Aid organizations, already on Lombok after it was hit a week earlier by a 6.4 quake that killed 16 people, said they were stepping up their humanitarian efforts.
Oxfam said more than 20,000 people were in temporary shelters and thousands more were camping out in the open. It said clean drinking water was scarce because of a recent spell of extremely dry weather in Lombok. Food, medical supplies, tarpaulins and clothes are also urgently needed, it said.
The lush countryside of northern Lombok is pockmarked with collapsed homes and shops and damaged mosques. Thousands of people sat on roadsides outside their houses under blue makeshift tents and tarps, too afraid to stay inside because of aftershocks or their homes are now uninhabitable.
Hundreds of tourists and workers were still struggling to get off three outlying resort islands where power was cut off and hotels and hostels were damaged. Nugroho said more than 4,600 foreign and Indonesian tourists had been evacuated from the islands, with ships taking people to ports in Lombok and Benoa, Bali.
