Aussies tell of amazing escapes from huge Lombok earthquake
AN Australian man sent goodbye texts to relatives before bundling up his family and fleeing through pitch-black jungle after Lombok’s deadly earthquake. Up to 300 Aussies remain stuck on the Gili Islands as many tourists began recounting their escape from the devastation.
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AN Australian man sent goodbye texts to relatives before bundling up his family and fleeing through pitch-black jungle after Lombok’s deadly earthquake.
Evan Burns believed he would die alongside his wife and toddler son when the quake struck on Sunday, killing at least 82 people.
It all but destroyed his home, and he fears some of his neighbours perished in the rubble of their houses.
After surviving the jolt and a series of strong aftershocks, Mr Burns, his wife, and his toddler son made a terrifying, 3km dash up a nearby mountain, fearing the quake may have spawned a deadly tsunami.
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Nursing a twisted ankle, the family and about 200 others from their village waited in the dark for the danger to pass.
He has since returned home and is struggling to comprehend the scale of the destruction.
“The force was so severe that it threw us out of bed, and the walls immediately started cracking,” he told AAP on Monday.
His house is now uninhabitable, having sustained severe structural damage, including a second storey that is caving in. Both windscreens of his car are smashed from falling debris.
He says there is still a sense of panic on the Indonesian island, where he manages a resort in Senggigi.
He estimates 70 per cent of the property’s guests have made their way to the airport, desperate to get off the island, but they are stuck there, with flights unable to cope with the mass exodus.
“The panic is quite severe. It’s very hard to console the people,” he said, adding relief flights must be a priority.
Mr Burns is no stranger to natural disasters, having endured other earthquakes, cyclones and tsunami scares, but Sunday’s magnitude-7 quake was the most terrifying of his life.
“We weren’t sure we were going to make it out alive.” Mr Burns has contacted Australian consular officials, who have told him help is on the way.
Earlier on Monday, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said Australian officials were making their way to Lombok to help Aussies caught up in the disaster. So far there are no reports of dead or injured Australians.
Sydney man Jon-Paul Kennedy was asleep in his mum’s villa when it collapsed around him.
He escaped without injury and made a panicked dash to the local hospital where his terminally ill mother is being treated, but both of them ended up in the street - his mum still in her bed - after the facility was evacuated.
“We were knocked certainly to the floor,” he told Sydney radio 2GB today.
“It was a pretty violent shaking and swaying of the building. We were pretty lucky to get out. There was certainly a lot of structural damage to the building.”
For Mr Kennedy and his sick mother, it was the second terrifying quake experience in less than a fortnight.
The pair rode out Lombok’s earlier, slightly weaker earthquake on July 29 but he says the latest tremblor was much more dramatic.
“I was sleeping at mum’s villa ... it started shaking and walls collapsing around me, furniture falling, this was in the dark as there was no electricity,” he wrote on Facebook.
“I managed to run for my life ... I am with mum on the street outside hospital waiting to get back into the room as we have been evacuated.”
Hobart woman Jodie Epper, who is volunteering on Lombok with her husband and son as part of the Australian Volunteer Program, said she was putting her son to bed when the tremor hit.
“We went out into the yard, the ground was still shaking very badly,” she told the ABC.
“I saw a few particularly older women getting carried, they’d been injured by rock falling and then of course a tsunami alert happened and there was a race to get to the top of a hill. Everyone was very scared,” she said.
Ms Epper said there are broken temples, broken walls and broken houses everywhere in her village.
“We are just going down our small alleyway to our house and we are climbing over the rubble to get in there.”