By Ingrid "Shortwave" Frost
The ground shook off Flores Island early Saturday morning, and by the time it stopped, at least five people were dead and buildings across eastern Indonesia lay damaged or flattened.
The magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck offshore, according to multiple reports from the region, prompting authorities to urge coastal residents to move inland or to higher ground — the standard, urgent precaution when a quake this size hits near open water. Indonesia sits on the Pacific "Ring of Fire," a horseshoe of fault lines that makes this kind of morning all too familiar for the archipelago nation.
Details remain thin in the first hours after the quake. Reports agree on the magnitude and the death toll of at least five, and on damage to structures near the epicenter, but a fuller accounting of injuries, displaced families, and destroyed homes will take days to assemble. Search-and-rescue teams were still working through the wreckage as of Saturday.
What's certain: this was a powerful, shallow-enough jolt to do real damage and to trigger fear of the sea retreating before it doesn't. Coastal evacuation orders are not issued lightly in a country that lost more than 200,000 people to the 2004 tsunami. For now, the number that matters is five confirmed dead — a number likely to be revised, as reporting on disasters like this always requires patience over speed.
FILED FROM SOMEWHERE WITH BAD COFFEE —
— Compiled from reporting by Al Jazeera and the BBC.
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