Earthquake in Flores, Indonesian death toll at least 51 with around 5,000 displaced

The figure this newspaper publishes today is the one verifiable at the time of writing, and it is provisional: at least 51 dead and around 5,000 people evacuated after the earthquake that struck the island of Flores, in the Indonesian province of East Nusa Tenggara, on Saturday morning. This is the toll updated as of August 16 (ANSA; Adnkronos).

The main tremor had a magnitude of 7.7, with an epicenter at sea about 68 kilometers north-northwest of the city of Ende. The US Geological Survey placed the hypocenter at a depth of around 10 kilometers. Indonesia’s national disaster management agency, the Bnpb, counted at least 341 aftershocks: a figure that explains much of the operational difficulty, since every aftershock forces a suspension and resumption of operations in unstable buildings.

Injured, homes, schools

Deputy Health Minister Benjamin Paulus Octavianus reported 36 serious injuries and 77 minor ones. On the material damage front, the survey speaks of over 900 homes and hundreds of other buildings severely damaged, including school and healthcare facilities (AGI, citing the French agency AFP; Euronews Italia, citing Associated Press).

The damage to hospitals and schools has an effect that becomes visible over days rather than hours: it reduces the places available to treat the injured and removes the public buildings that in Indonesia usually serve as gathering points for displaced people. Landslides, the agencies report, are hampering the arrival of aid in the island’s inland areas, and the priority stated by the disaster agency concerns supplying the evacuation centers.

“supplying the evacuation centers is now an absolute priority” — Berton Suar Pelita Panjaitan, spokesperson for the Indonesian disaster management agency

The second tremor

A few hours after the Flores earthquake, a second earthquake of magnitude 6.9 was recorded on the island of Sumatra, at the other end of the archipelago. The available records do not report a toll of victims or damage for this second event, and in the absence of data this newspaper does not estimate one.

The Foreign Ministry’s Crisis Unit has not at this time reported any Italian citizens involved. Around 500 Italian nationals are believed to be on the island of Flores, a figure that concerns presence, not exposure to harm: it is the number consular authorities use to calibrate checks, not a count of people in difficulty.

How this toll is constructed

It is worth explaining where the figure you are reading comes from. The four sources used here trace back to three distinct channels — the Indonesian national agency Bnpb, the US Geological Survey for seismic parameters, and the international agencies AFP and AP for on-the-ground reporting — and this satisfies the requirement of independence. But a count of victims after an earthquake in an archipelago remains partial until isolated areas are reached: the most uncertain part of the toll is not the number of injured in hospitals, which is already recorded, but that of the localities reachable only by sea or by air.

The figure that best describes the scale of the emergency today is not the death toll but the number of displaced people: five thousand people out of their homes, on an island where over 900 dwellings are severely damaged, means a housing and water supply problem that will last weeks, regardless of how the victim count settles.