A powerful 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck off Flores island in Indonesia early Saturday, killing at least 38 people and damaging buildings and homes.
Revising the earlier count, a disaster management official said, “Thirty-eight people have been confirmed dead, two were seriously injured, 11 sustained minor injuries, and approximately 2,000 people have evacuated on their own.”
The quake, which also triggered a brief tsunami warning, hit the Flores region with a depth of 10 kilometres at 5:58 am Indonesia time and the epicentre was 68 km north-northwest of the city of Ende in East Nusa Tenggara province, as per the US Geological Survey.
Multiple videos on social media showed buildings collapsing and people running in panic.
BUILDINGS SWAY VIOLENTLY and CRUMBLE as 7.7 MONSTER QUAKE ROCKS INDONESIA https://t.co/qMl0QaNyzT pic.twitter.com/fvePye9AJo
— RT (@RT_com) August 14, 2026
A resident in Nagekeo said he was at a market when the earth started shaking.
“The shaking was strong. Thankfully, we were already outside the house,” he told the news agency AFP.
“People were panicking, running here and there. We’re evacuating for the time being… and trying to get to the hills,” he said, adding: “My family is safe. No one was harmed,” he added.
A 31-year-old hospital customer service official said he “panicked when it suddenly started to shake”.
“Patients also fled the hospital, the jolt was big. I saw some walls were cracked,” he said.
A resident of Sikka, a regency within East Nusa Tenggara province, said a number of buildings were damaged.
“Many buildings here were damaged … I saw that the waiting room at the port terminal in Maumere had collapsed,” she told the news agency AP.
Pacific tsunami alert panicked mass evacuations as vast 7.7 quake downs infrastructure pic.twitter.com/5tZctEVI64
— RT (@RT_com) August 15, 2026
Indonesia’s Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) had earlier warned of the possibility of tsunami waves following the quake and urged people to get to higher ground.
“We strongly urge our communities along the northern coast of Flores and in the southern parts, on the southern islands and across the southern region, to carry out self-evacuation immediately,” Abdul Muhari, an official at the national disaster agency, BNPB, said.
Residents should “move away from the shore, either by going more than two kilometres inland or by moving up into hilly areas more than 10 metres high”, he told local broadcaster Kompas TV.
People evacuated from a building collapse at Jayakarta hotel following an earthquake of magnitude 7.7, in Labuan Bajo, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia
Photo Credit: REUTERS
The tsunami warning was later lifted.
In 1992, a magnitude 7 earthquake caused a tsunami that killed about 2,500 people on the southeastern island of Flores, part of a group of islands in the eastern half of Indonesia.
Why Indonesia Is Prone To Earthquakes
Indonesia, a vast archipelago of more than 17,000 islands, and neighbouring countries experience frequent earthquakes due to their location in the Pacific “Ring of Fire” — an arc of intense seismic activity stretching from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.
Among Indonesia’s history of deadly quakes is a devastating 9.1-magnitude tremor in 2004 that struck off the coast of Sumatra and triggered a tsunami that killed 220,000 throughout the region, including about 170,000 in Indonesia.
In 2018, a powerful quake shook the island of Lombok, and several more tremors followed over the next couple of weeks, killing more than 550 people on the holiday island and neighbouring Sumbawa.
(With agency inputs)
