Death toll rises, foreigners evacuated after Lombok, Bali earthquake

Already, 98 people have been confirmed dead - 96 on Lombok and two on Bali and 239 have been injured after the earthquake hit on Sunday night. Tens of thousands of people have been forced to seek refuge after buildings and houses collapsed.

Lombok’s main airport was near-overwhelmed on Monday afternoon by hundreds of local and foreign tourists seeking a rapid escape.

Many tourists who were caught out on the three Gili resort islands described a chaotic trip back to Lombok, with authorities struggling to organise an orderly evacuation.

There were about 1000 tourists on Gili Trawangan, Gili Air and Gili Meno evacuated, but authorities later said the evacuation of low-lying Gili was not mandatory.

Despite night falling, people were still arriving at Bangsal harbour from the Gili islands, with between 2000 and 2700 tourists set to be evacuated.

From Bangsal, foreign tourists can go to Lombok or to Bali and then back to their countries, with 18 18 additional flights added at Lombok international airport.

Jasmine Ockhuysen and Todd Hartley, from Brisbane, were on the tiny island of Gili Meno when the quake struck.

The couple spent most of the day after the quake on the island as they were alarmed by the over-crowded boats leaving for Lombok in the morning.

The couple had been sitting on the front deck of their bungalow, eating chips when “everything just started shaking”.

“We both got up at the same time. I looked at his face and I knew it was serious. I went running for the door to go inside, he was running for the stairs to get away from the building,” Ms Ockhuysen said.

“The power went off, it was just pitch black.”

After finding her phone to provide light, they noticed a “massive ornament in our bungalow had fallen down onto the chair I was sitting on. I was horrified when I saw that".

“After that we made our way out to the beach, (we) sat out there and (then) we thought it was going to be OK so we went back to our room, then we got that second shudder and we just ran,” she said.

The couple spent the night sleeping on a kind restaurant owner's floor and now “we just want to go home”.

It’s a sentiment near ubiquitous among tourists who were present when the earthquake struck.

Frida Mariegaard and Christoffer Stampe Geisler, Danes travelling as part of a group of 20, told

Fairfax Media they were cutting their trip short to go home.

Fighting back tears, Ms Mariegaard said “everything was smashed” when the quake hit.

She described seeing a collapsed mosque on the island “and a lot of people who were injured. I think we saw two people who died, there was blood everywhere”.

The group slept on a football field, initially, before moving to higher ground.

A possible tsunami was their greatest fear through a long night.

“We saw a lot of shooting stars and I wished every time, and I really just want to go home now.”

“I just wanted to get to my girlfriend,” Christoffer added.

The earthquake of 7 magnitude on August 5 caused extensive damage that is still being assessed.

Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for the National Disaster Mitigation Agency, BNPB, said at a briefing on Monday afternoon that the agency believes the death toll will rise.

Mr Sutopo said it was difficult for rescuers to reach victims because of a lack of heavy lifting equipment to assist the rescue operations.

He said acongregation was praying at a mosque in Tanjung district, North Lombok, when the earthquake hit.

“We believe there are dead people under the debris but we are rescuing them manually. So we don't have any number of how many died under that mosque in Tanjung district,” he said.

So far all of the dead are Indonesians, but Lombok and the nearby Gilis are popular with foreign tourists, including Australians. There are reports that 19 foreigners have been injured, but the

Department of Foreign Affairs confirmed on Monday afternoon that no Australians were known to have died or been seriously injured as a result of the earthquake.

Australia's Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, who was in Lombok for a regional counter-terrorism meeting, told Fairfax Media the quake "was powerful enough to put us on the floor".

Dutton and his delegation, along with his New Zealand counterpart, have since left their hotel and have gone to Bali, where the quake's effects were less severe.

"We were up on the 12th floor, the lights went out and we were able to evacuate," Dutton said.

"I think we were pretty lucky in the end.

"Emergency services responded really well. They were able to evacuate us to safe ground and we are very grateful. There have been no reports of any local injures that we are aware of but we are anxiously awaiting further advice on that."

The Indonesian Foreign Affairs Ministry said the Bali Process meeting on people smuggling in Denpasar, which Foreign Minister Julie Bishop was due to attend, would go ahead.

Bishop has arrived in Bali, and said consular staff were being sent to Lombok to assess the damage and assist Australians.

The most severely damaged area is north Lombok, partly because it is the most populated area.

By 8am on Monday morning (10am AEST), there had been more than 132 aftershocks, according to Sutopo.

Bridget O’Kane, from Melbourne, who was holidaying on Gili Air Island, said she and three friends “heard a huge bang, someone said it was an earthquake, and we raced outside”.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared in my life. The earthquake itself wasn’t so bad, it was the fear of the tsunami afterwards.”

She said local people had been very kind, bringing blankets and they spent the night in a field.

“In the field there might have been about 100 people with us, a mixture of locals and tourists."

Irish backpackers Sharon Boot and Fiona Hughes were also on Gili Air and “the restaurant we were at literally came down around us”.

“All the staff started to run, the lights went out, the whole roof shook. It was mayhem, the place was wrecked, we got out of the restaurant and got back to our hotel.

The pair said there were chaotic scenes on Monday morning as foreign tourists attempted to take boats back to Lombok.

“There were no authorities, people were massively overcharging for boats back. It was ridiculous.”

Like Ms Boot and Ms Hughes, other foreign tourists at Lombok airport complained about some locals price gouging both for boats to Lombok, and for taxi rides on to the airport.

In one district of North Lombok, an estimated 85 per cent of buildings had collapsed.

The quake hit about 6.46pm Jakarta time (9.46pm AEST) on Sunday, 27 kilometres north-east of northern Lombok at a 15-kilometre depth, triggering a tsunami warning just a week after another quake in the same region killed 16 people.

Most of the fatalities occurred as a result of debris falling from houses that had collapsed in the earthquake.

The epicentre of the quake was the northern slope of Mount Rinjani, near where the previous quake struck a week ago.

Indonesia's BMKG (the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency) issued a tsunami warning soon afterwards, but that warning was lifted about an hour and 45 minutes after the quake hit, at 8.30pm local time.

There were also reports of blackouts and of mobile phone networks going down in northern Lombok, near the epicentre of the quake.

Footage of damage to local businesses in Bali quickly emerged, too.

Australian tourist Sarah Lucy Rice, who is in holiday in Canggu, Bali, told Fairfax Media that she and her friends were eating dinner when they felt the ground begin to shake.

"I had one foot on the ground and one foot on a chair and shaking began to increase. Then we realised the earth was moving. Across the road, at a massage parlour, we saw people run out onto the street in towels and sarongs, and that's when we moved," she said.

At the Matahari shopping centre in Denpasar, staff had a major clean-up job ahead of them after roof tiles were shaken down onto the street below after the earthquake hit.

Indonesia's minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs, former General Wiranto, said the regional counter-terrorism summit had been postponed following the earthquake.

"All delegates who will participate are safe. And due to the quake we decided to postpone the sub-regional meeting on counter-terrorism and let delegates go back to their countries," Wiranto said.

Australian actress Teresa Palmer is among a number of celebrities holidaying on Bali who tweeted about the quake.

US model and television presenter Chrissy Teigen posted a series of brief updates on her Twitter profile. The host of Lip Sync Battle initially wrote: "Oh my god. Bali. Trembling. So long," before adding "Phewwwwww," indicating that the tremors had stopped.

Teigen, 32, is with her husband, singer John Legend, and their two young children, Luna and Miles.

The former Sports Illustrated cover star revealed the house in which they are staying is elevated from the ground, which added to the terrifying experience.

Teigen wrote: "Oh man. We are on stilts. It felt like a ride. 15 solid seconds of 'holy shit this is happening."

Like Bali, Lombok is known for pristine beaches and mountains. Hotels and other buildings in both locations are not allowed to exceed the height of coconut trees.

Indonesia is prone to earthquakes due to its location on the Pacific "Ring of Fire", an arc of volcanoes and faultlines in the Pacific Basin.

In December 2004, a massive magnitude 9.1 earthquake off Sumatra triggered a tsunami that killed 230,000 people in a dozen countries.

with AP