Indonesia seeks 200 earthquake victims

• Death toll rises to 268, with more than 1,000 injured, officials say. 151 people are still missing, according to the National Agency for Disaster Management.
• More than 22,000 dwellings were demolished and more than 58,000 people forced to flee their homes.
• A government representative from Cianjur, Herman Suherman, told the media that several residents were trapped in the wreckage of collapsed buildings.

Rescuers were searching through the rubble on Tuesday for survivors of the strong earthquake that destroyed homes and other structures in a densely populated part of West Java province, Indonesia, killing at least 268 people.

More than 1,000 people were hurt, and 151 more people are still missing, according to the National Agency for Disaster Management (BNPB) of the nation.

According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the 5.6-magnitude earthquake struck the Cianjur district of West Java around 1:21 p.m. local time on Monday at a depth of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). This caused buildings to fall as school lessons were in session.

Following earlier inconsistencies in the reported death toll being provided by officials, the scope of the death and destruction wrought by the earthquake on Tuesday became increasingly obvious.

According to BNPB Major General Suharyanto on Tuesday, more than 22,000 dwellings were demolished and more than 58,000 people were forced to flee their homes.

Photos showed buildings reduced to rubble, with bricks and scraps of broken metal strewn on the streets.

“The majority of those who died were children,” West Java’s governor, Ridwan Kamil, told reporters Monday, adding the death toll was likely to increase further. “So many incidents occurred at several Islamic schools.”

According to humanitarian organization Save the Children, which claimed that more than 50 schools had been affected, the strong earthquakes pulled kids out of their classrooms.

Mia Saharosa, a teacher at one of the affected schools, said the earthquake “was a shock to all of us,” according to the group.

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“We all gathered in the field, children were terrified and cried, worried about their families at home,” Saharosa said. “We hug each other, strengthen each other, and continue to pray.”

A government representative from Cianjur, Herman Suherman, told the media that several residents were trapped in the wreckage of collapsed buildings. On Metro TV’s news broadcast, it looked like hundreds of wounded were receiving care in a hospital parking lot.

According to Reuters, television images showed people huddling outside of nearly completely demolished structures.

President Joko Widodo of Indonesia, who visited the earthquake-affected districts on Tuesday, announced that the government would offer homeowners of severely damaged homes compensation of up to $3,200 each.

Jokowi stated that homes should be rebuilt as earthquake-resistant structures.

One resident, named only as Muchlis, said he felt “a huge tremor” and the walls and ceiling of his office were damaged.

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“I was very shocked. I worried there would be another quake,” he told on TV.

Due to the fact that 25 aftershocks were registered in the first two hours following the earthquake, Indonesia’s agency of meteorology, the BMKG, issued a warning about the risk of landslides, particularly in the event of heavy rain.

He added that the situation is still chaotic and that some of the trapped people were not immediately accessible by rescuers.

The victims’ basic needs are being met as government officials construct tents and shelters for them.

In contrast, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin expressed his “deepest regrets” in response to the fatalities on Tuesday at the ASEAN multilateral summit in Cambodia.

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The “Ring of Fire,” a region encircling the Pacific Ocean that frequently experiences earthquakes and volcanic activity, passes through Indonesia. It runs from Japan and Indonesia on one side of the Pacific to California and South America on the other, making it one of the seismically active zones on the world.

In 2004, a tsunami that slammed 14 nations and killed 226,000 people along the Indian Ocean coastline—more than half of them in Indonesia—was caused by a 9.1 magnitude earthquake that occurred off the northern Indonesian island of Sumatra.

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