A magnitude 6.4 earthquake has killed at least 10 people on the Indonesian island of Lombok, some 140 miles of east of Bali, according to the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).
The dead include a Malaysian citizen, Indonesia’s National Disaster Search and Rescue agency says. A spokeswoman said 33 people were also injured.
The Red Cross is still trying to ascertain how many people could be missing, IFRC spokeswoman Husni told CNN.
The earthquake struck around 5:45 a.m. Sunday local time (6:45 p.m. Saturday ET) and had a shallow depth of 7.5 kilometers (4.6 miles), according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).
The USGS issued a yellow pager alert for shaking from the quake. Yellow indicates some casualties are possible and the impact should be relatively localized, the USGS says.
The quake was not far from Mount Rinjani, a volcano.
‘A lot of damage’
The owner of the a hotel in West Lombok told CNN that Lombok had small earthquakes “every month or so” but that Sunday’s quake was the strongest he had experienced on the island.
“We were still sleeping when we felt the earthquake, so we rushed outside of our building. There was about 20 seconds of shaking, the water in the pool was making quite large waves,” Jean Paul Volchaert, owner of the Puncak Hotel, said.
“Luckily there was no damage to our building, our neighborhood was relatively untouched, but I know there have been casualties and a lot of damage in the north of the island,” Volchaert said. “We felt aftershocks for two hours after the initial earthquake, so we’re worried that there could be more damage caused.”
The Indonesian Red Cross said on Twitter that Lombok’s Sebalun district appeared to have been worst affected. The organization said its teams were helping with search and rescue.
PMI teams mount an immediate response as a 6.4 magnitude #earthquake strikes #Lombok island. We are checking people’s needs, giving first aid and supporting search and rescue, especially in Sebalun distric, the worst affected areas. #PMISiapBantu pic.twitter.com/5ORZ1n9iwp
— Indonesian Red Cross (@palangmerah) July 29, 2018
Officials in Australia, India and Indonesia did not issue a tsunami advisory.
Ring of Fire
Model and personality Chrissy Teigen, married to singer John Legend, tweeted that she felt the quake in Bali.
“Oh my. Long earthquake here in Bali,” she said in an initial post.
That was followed a couple of hours later with: “oh don’t mind us just more earthquakes over here.” Teigen had been tweeting prior to that about her family vacation in Bali.
The Indonesian archipelago where Lombok and Bali are located is part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, an area of intense seismic and volcanic activity.
The 40,000-kilometer (25,000-mile) area stretches from the boundary of the Pacific Plate and the smaller plates such as the Philippine Sea plate to the Cocos and Nazca Plates that line the edge of the Pacific Ocean.
