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At least 50 people have been killed in eastern Indonesia as a result of flash flooding and a landslide, Indonesia’s disaster management said. Nearly 60 people were also injured and sent to the hospital, the agency said in a news release. Search and rescue operations are underway in some of the affected areas. Authorities cannot reach some of the hardest-hit places because of downed trees, damaged roads and detritus blocking their paths.
The collapse of an unlicensed gold mine in Indonesia buried dozens of people, and rescuers dug desperately with their bare hands and farm tools on Wednesday to unearth victims calling for help from beneath the rubble. National disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said three people were confirmed dead and 14 have been rescued. “It is estimated that 43 people are still buried,” he said.
The “black box” voice recorder from a Lion Air flight which crashed off the coast of Jakarta in October has been recovered, said officials on Monday. All 189 people on board died when Flight JT610 fell into the sea shortly after taking off for the short journey to Pangkal Pinang. The voice recorder was found on Monday morning but was “broken into two pieces”. “Hopefully it’s still useful [to investigators],” Haryo Satmiko, deputy head of Indonesia’s transport safety committee (KNKT) told Agence France-Presse.
On Thursday, Indonesia’s National Board for Disaster Management raised the warning level for Anak Krakatau to 3, the second-highest rank. It earlier appeared to be calming down following Saturday’s eruption, which caused a 3-meter (10 foot) high tsunami to sweep through the Sunda Strait, killing more than 430 people and displacing tens of thousands.
At least 281 people were killed and hundreds more injured on Saturday when a tsunami hit the Sunda Strait. There are currently 57 people reported missing with the number expected to rise. Indonesian rescue teams and military continue to search the area for survivors on Monday. The tsunami was triggered by an underwater volcano landslide.
The death toll from the Indonesia tsunami rose to 1,234 on Tuesday as residents in the city of Palu faced their fifth day with scare clean drinking water and food. An Indonesian pilot honored an air traffic controller who died in Friday’s earthquake calling him a ‘guardian angel’ for facilitating a safe take off.
The official death toll has risen to 844 after a 7.5 magnitude earthquake and tsunami hit Indonesia. Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency warned the toll could increase even more as the affected area is larger than originally believed. Over 48,000 people have been displaced as rescuers struggle with no electricity in the region.
A 19-year old Indonesian lamp keeper survived 49 days at sea in a fishing hut before being rescued by a Panamanian-flagged vessel. Aldi Novel Adilang’s fishing boat was sent adrift when heavy winds caused the moorings to snap. Aldi ended up near the Pacific island of Guam – 1,500 miles (2,500km) away from his original location. Aldi had just a few days of supplies and survived by fishing and filtering water.
Indonesian police rescued a woman on Sunday in Central Sulawesi province after she was held as a sex slave for 15 years from the age of 13 by an elderly village shaman. The man was charged under sex abuse and child protection laws. The woman’s family initially brought their daughter to the shaman for treatment.
A magnitude 6.9 earthquake hit Lombok Island in Bali on Sunday morning, killing at least 91 people and injuring hundreds more just a week after another earthquake killed more than a dozen people in the same region. The earthquake damaged buildings as far away as Denpasar on Bali and triggered a Tsunami warning.