Those are the words of terrified Australian, Sydneysider John Todd, who spoke to Fairfax Media about the moment the Lombok earthquake “exploded”, upending his holiday with his wife Scherie.

Todd is not alone, with other Australian and overseas tourists scrambling to leave Lombok and the nearby trio of Gili islands. Authorities said 4636 people were evacuated from the latter.

Their reaction, and their fears of further aftershocks – or another big earthquake – is understandable, but thousands of locals have lost their homes and many would also fear for their livelihoods on the tourism-dependent island.

In the villages of northern Lombok, close to the epicentre of Sunday night’s earthquake, it is clear the government has been slow to reach some of the hardest hit areas due to a lack of infrastructure.

For many, food and water remains in short supply and people are afraid to return to their homes – that is if they are still standing. Local community groups have stepped up to fill some of the need, operating open air kitchens - but it is not enough.

The death toll reached 105 on Tuesday, with 236 people injured. It is expected to rise further because authorities believe people have been hit and killed by buildings including mosques, health clinics and houses which have collapsed.

Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for the National Disaster Mitigation Agency, BNPB, said at a briefing that most of the dead had been found in North Lombok

As many as 600,000 people have been affected by the earthquake, with up to 20,000 people living in temporary shelters.

Indonesian authorities are struggling to get help to people hit hardest, according to Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for the National Disaster Mitigation Agency, BNPB, because of the difficult conditions rescuers face.

Overnight to Tuesday, two more strong after shocks of 5.4 and 5.5 hit Lombok, with each lasting around 10 seconds.

Todd, from Northbridge, told Fairfax Media at Lombok airport that he and his wife had spent a night sleeping in a carpark after the earthquake hit.

While the locals had been “terrific” in offering help, the couple were now cutting short their holiday.

“We are going to Singapore, we just want to get out of Indonesia to be honest,” Todd said.

“It was pretty scary … it was terrifying.

“I can’t imagine what it was like for the people who were up where it really happened [the epicentre], it would be just awful.”

Twenty-three-year old local man Ghozali who lives in northern Lombok and works on the tourist island of Gili T, slept outside with his extended family on Monday night because of serious structural damage to his home.

Ghozali told Fairfax Media that he and other locals working in the industry feared it would be a long time before tourists returned to Lombok, which would mean he would lose his income after already losing so much in the earthquake.

“I was working there [Gili T] and this afternoon I came here [to Lombok],” he said.

“It was very difficult, people were fighting [to get on boats].”

Asked when he would go back to work, Ghozali said “I don’t know” and that without work, “it will be really hard”.

He and his family had briefly returned to their homes, he said, to claim the food and water they could but that was now running out.

On Monday evening, Fairfax Media met locals who have been hard hit by the devastating quake including a 95-year-old woman, Noorfa, who was being treated for multiple broken bones and a dislocated hip – without anaesthetic, in an open air field hospital – as her son-in-law Lalu Abdurrahman looked on.

Noorfa had arrived at the field hospital nearly 24 hours after the earthquake and had received only a saline drip as doctors treated her.

Lalu Abdurrahman said he had been unable to save his mother-in-law because “I was trying to save my child and she was inside on her own”.

“So I wasn’t able to rescue her when the earthquake struck. I heard her scream my name and I found her pinned by the falling wall.”

It had taken at least an hour to free her from underneath the wall, he said, with the help of relatives.

Another northern Lombok local, Sanisah, nursed her two-month-old baby girl Zilla Fithri while her husband and two other children slept on a tarpaulin in the open air.

Sanisah said her family home no longer had walls, and had escaped the earthquake with just the clothes on their back, and had barely enough food or water and had not yet received assistance from the Indonesian government.

“No one has come, no doctor, no government official,” she said.

“I need food, I need clothes, I need anything that anyone can give me.”

Sanisah and her extended family group of about 10 people had had three bags of rice to share that day.

Ghozali’s assessment of the likely impact on tourism to Lombok was backed by Australian-based Indonesia expert Matthew Busch, a non-resident fellow at the Lowy Institute, who said the effect of the most recent earthquake, and another one a week ago, could be severe for the local tourism sector.

“Things happen all over south-east Asia and Australians continue to go back. Think of the Bali bombings for example, it hasn’t persuaded Australians not to travel to Bali. And I think it probably revived more quickly than people thought,” he said.

However, “Lombok is perhaps a bit different as, for example, there isn’t infrastructure in place to deal with these disasters”.

“So if you find yourself in a place like Lombok during a disaster, you are quite far away from help and the ability to be evacuated. It becomes apparent that they don’t have the infrastructure to handle this kind of thing, so perhaps people will evaluate that in the future.”

Phil Turtle, from the Australia-Indonesia Business council, said he thought tourists would return.

"This is obviously a terrible tragedy and we would hope it’s not compounded further by a fall-off in the vastly important tourism industry, as this is a potential double whammy for locals. Australians have a great love for Bali and Lombok, and this will undoubtedly continue."

Aid agencies such as Oxfam are providing clean drinking water and tarpaulin sheets to about 5000 survivors and there are fears the death toll could rise significantly as more bodies are uncovered in the rubble of collapsed buildings.