A damaged building is seen following a 7.7-magnitude earthquake in Ruteng, Manggarai, East Nusa Tenggara, on August 15, 2026. A strong 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck off Flores island in eastern Indonesia early on August 15, the US Geological Survey and Indonesian authorities said, triggering a tsunami warning and prompting hundreds to evacuate.
by SELO / AFP via Getty Images
Rescue teams on Indonesia's Flores Island have now confirmed 68 deaths and more than 200 injuries, four days after a shallow magnitude-7.7 earthquake ripped through the region before sunrise on Saturday, August 15. The figure, released by Indonesia's National Disaster Management Agency and reported by the Associated Press, has climbed steadily since the earliest counts sat in the dozens — and officials still haven't ruled out further revisions as crews finish clearing landslide-blocked terrain.
Toll Climbs as Crews Reach Isolated Villages
The U.S. Geological Survey pinpointed the rupture roughly 68 kilometers north-northwest of Ende, in East Nusa Tenggara province, at a depth near 10 kilometers — shallow enough to shake a wide swath of the island violently. Deaths climbed in stages — from the high 30s and 40s on the first day to the 50s by Sunday — before authorities confirmed 68 on Monday as isolated communities finally came into view. Displacement figures moved just as fast: roughly 12,800 people are now unable to return home, more than double the estimate of about 5,000 reported right after the quake, according to BNPB spokesman Berton Suar Pelita Panjaitan, cited by Al Jazeera. Search officials say no one has been reported missing.
The earthquake's aftershock sequence has kept building rather than settling down. BNPB counted nearly 1,000 aftershocks by Sunday morning, with only 46 strong enough for residents to notice; by Monday, BMKG's tally had grown to more than 1,600, including 59 that were felt, according to Kompas. Geophysicists say the sequence could keep rattling the island for another month or two. The single largest aftershock reached magnitude 6.2. A tsunami warning briefly sent coastal residents fleeing for high ground, with tide gauges recording waves up to 1.61 meters at Reo before the alert was lifted within a few hours, per monitoring data reported by watchers.news. Landslides have proven the tougher problem, burying stretches of the roughly 700-kilometer Trans-Flores Highway and slowing every food, water and medicine convoy trying to reach the interior.
An earthquake victim receives treatment in a temporary medical tent due to fears of aftershocks, in front of the Ruteng hospital in Ruteng, Manggarai, East Nusa Tenggara on August 15, 2026. Rescuers combed through debris for survivors on August 15 after a powerful earthquake struck off Indonesia's eastern Flores island, killing at least 47 people, according to disaster officials.
by JUNI KRISWANTO / AFP via Getty Images
Soldiers, Aircraft and Tent Hospitals Fill the Gap
Jakarta has leaned almost entirely on its own military and disaster machinery rather than waiting on outside rescue teams. More than 1,800 military and police personnel are now working the disaster zone, backed by roughly ten aircraft and several naval vessels distributing north of 100 metric tons of supplies, the Associated Press reported. Separately, the government says it moved 50,000 aid packages weighing about 275 tonnes to the region over the weekend — a different snapshot from a different day, not part of the same rising total. Two field hospitals now operate out of Ruteng after the town's main hospital was damaged, and aid workers finally reached the small, hard-to-access island of Palue late Sunday after what one local police official called "a near-death journey" by sea and over landslide-choked roads, CBS News reported.
Outside Help Piles Up, But Jakarta Hasn't Asked
International offers keep arriving even though Indonesia hasn't formally requested outside search-and-rescue support. The World Bank has said it's preparing an emergency funding package for recovery, though the size of that assistance won't be set until a fuller damage assessment is finished — no dollar figure has been officially confirmed, per reporting from HNGN. Search teams from Australia and Singapore remain on standby rather than deployed. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen offered the bloc's Copernicus satellite network to support the search effort, calling it Europe's "eyes in the sky." The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is coordinating shelter deliveries alongside Indonesian Red Cross volunteers, and World Central Kitchen has crews working to get meals to affected communities.
The disaster collided directly with Indonesia's 81st Independence Day on Monday. President Prabowo Subianto asked the crowd at the Jakarta ceremony to pray for those hit by disasters in East Nusa Tenggara, according to Antara, even as thousands of Flores residents spent the holiday under tarpaulin tents rather than risk sleeping in cracked homes. "My house is just rubble now," Rasyid Jafar, a clothing trader in the hard-hit village of Reo, told CBS News, adding that his neighbors urgently needed food, medicine and clean water.
A Fault Line Flores Has Felt Before
For many islanders, the disaster reopened memories of December 1992, when an earthquake of similar strength triggered a tsunami that killed roughly 2,500 people along the same stretch of coast. Both quakes have been traced to the Flores Back-Arc Thrust, a fault system running beneath the Flores Sea. This weekend's toll remains far below that earlier catastrophe, but the same pattern — collapsed low-rise housing, roads severed by landslides — underscores how exposed this stretch of Indonesia's Ring of Fire remains, an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands squeezed between the Eurasian, Pacific and Australian tectonic plates.
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