【Emergency Response to Lombok Earthquake】
2018.08.08
Within hours of the magnitude 7 earthquake that struck northern areas of the island of Lombok in Indonesia, resulting in the loss of more than 300 lives, A-PAD international emergency response, medical and search and rescue (SAR) teams arrived on the island to assist local organizations to locate missing persons, provide medical assistance and assess the needs of survivors. Flying to Lombok with the response teams were A-PAD COO Kaori Neki and Dr Yuichiro Sakamoto of the Faculty of Medicine, Saga University, a specialist in emergency medical care.
The death toll is expected to rise as rubble of 13,000 collapsed buildings, destroyed by two powerful quakes within a week, is cleared. Power and communications are yet to be restored and landslides and a collapsed bridge has blocked access to areas around the quake epicentre in the island’s north. On the day that the A-PAD team arrived, a rescue team belonging to our local partner, the Indonesian humanitarian organization ACT (Aksi Cepat Tanggap) pulled out two bodies from the rubble of a collapsed building.
In cooperation with A-PAD Indonesia and ACT, the A-PAD Team were able to visit the main public
hospital of Tanjung, the local administrative center that had been badly damaged by the quake. Staff
set up some 30 beds in the shade of trees and in tents on a nearby field for the injured. At the Tanjung Emergency Coordination Centre, the team was able to meet with heads of local organizations participating in the rescue effort including the coordinator of the Indonesian military medical team, the deputy director of the Indonesian SAR Agency, and the regent of North Lombok. As a result, they could assess the needs of medical doctors and the availability of medical supplies in the temporary outdoor medical clinic and evacuation centers.
The A-PAD Medical team spent Wednesday August 8 working with the ACT Recue team at the heavily affected town of Dangiang searching for survivors in the rubble and treating the injured through operating a mobile clinic. On the same day, A-PAD’s Taiwan Search and Rescue (SAR) team arrived and joined the joint A-PAD and ACT operation groups. We will continue to report on the situation from Lombok. Thank you very much for your support.
