Flores quake toll reaches 111, the deadliest in Indonesia since 2022

The death toll from the 15 August earthquake off Flores has risen to 111, according to Indonesia’s National Disaster Management Agency and local officials compiling hospital figures. Another 1,678 people have been injured, 336 of them seriously. It is the deadliest earthquake in the country since the 2022 West Java quake.

The rupture struck at 05:58 WITA, a shallow magnitude 7.7 to 7.8 event north of the island in East Nusa Tenggara. USGS placed the epicentre about 68 kilometres north-northwest of Ende at a depth near 10 kilometres. BMKG placed it closer to Mbay at about 15 kilometres. Peak ground acceleration reached 0.635 g. A tsunami warning covered four provinces and was lifted at 08:30 WITA after a 1.61-metre wave was measured at Reo in Manggarai.

Governor Emanuel Melkiades Laka Lena said most of the dead were asleep when walls and roofs came down. Manggarai recorded 41 deaths and East Manggarai 36. Nagekeo recorded 13. The remaining 15 were in Sikka, Ende, Ngada and West Manggarai. In Reok district alone eight people died. A passenger terminal in Maumere collapsed on people waiting inside.

Houses, aftershocks, displacement

Counts of damaged houses have moved as teams reach villages that were cut off by landslides. One BNPB run put 73,818 houses in the damaged column, including 23,276 heavily damaged. Another compilation speaks of about 77,900 damaged homes, 24,500 of them collapsed or badly broken. Public buildings, madrasas and roads sit on a separate list. Displacement figures have run from the low tens of thousands in the first days to well over 100,000 at later checkpoints, with one BNPB briefing citing 180,327 people out of their houses.

The aftershock sequence has been long. Early counts passed 2,000 events within three days. Later tallies exceed 5,600, with more than 100 felt and a largest aftershock around magnitude 6.1. BMKG told residents to expect the sequence to decay over three to four weeks. Many families have stayed outdoors anyway.

Search officials have said at points that no one is listed as missing, which is unusual after a shallow coastal quake. That statement is only as good as access. Palue Island and parts of Nagekeo were among the last places reached. Identification of the dead has continued in hospitals, which is why the toll is still moving more than ten days after the main shock.

Why Flores shook this hard

Flores sits where the Australian plate subducts beneath the Sunda arc. Shallow thrust and crustal faults under the Flores Sea have produced large earthquakes before. The 1992 Flores quake and tsunami remain the local memory against which this one is measured. This year’s shock did not generate a basin-wide tsunami. It did generate a local wave high enough to justify the first warning, and it threw masonry in towns that still have a large stock of unreinforced houses.

Power failed in the first hours, which slowed the casualty lists. Helicopter and road teams then spent days on landslide-blocked tracks in Manggarai and East Manggarai, the two regencies that hold most of the dead. Flores is majority Catholic in a Muslim-majority country. Churches and parish halls became shelters next to official camps.

One hundred and eleven is still a provisional number. It is already high enough to mark the event as the country’s worst earthquake disaster in four years. The reconstruction bill will be set by the house-damage tables, not by the death roll, and those tables are not yet stable.