A 6.9-magnitude earthquake struck the Indonesian island of Lombok Sunday, just hours after a 6.3-magnitude quake shook the island, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
Two smaller quakes were reported around the same time.
There were no immediate reports of fatalities, but the National Disaster Mitigation Agency said the island has lost all power.
It said several homes and buildings have collapsed in Sembalun subdistrict on the northeast part of Lombok.
The quakes were also felt on the neighboring islands of Bali and Sumbawa and as far away as East Java and Makassar in Sulawesi.
Sunday’s quakes come just two weeks after an earthquake on the same island left more than 400 dead.
Ninik Rahayu of Ombudsman Indonesia, told VOA’s Indonesian service that she was asked to leave her hotel in Lombok Sunday. “We frantically run outside,” she said. The hotel management prevented guests from going back in “because there are some aftershocks,” she added.
“This is probably the fifth big earthquake today,” Sumbawa resident Muta Aryani told VOA. She said village officials asked the panicked residents to move to a safer place. “Now we are in a big field,” she said.
Landslides were reported in a national park Sunday on Mount Rinjani, where hundreds were trapped after a July 29 earthquake that killed 17 people. The park has been closed since then.
The 6.9-magnitude earthquake that struck on Aug. 5 killed 436 people and forced more than 350,000 people to flee their homes.
Indonesia is prone to earthquakes due to its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of volcanoes and geologic fault lines in the Pacific Ocean Basin. In December 2004, a magnitude-9.1 earthquake off Sumatra island triggered a tsunami that killed 230,000 people in a dozen countries. Voice of America
