Two powerful earthquakes strike Indonesia within hours, killing at least 47

A 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck eastern Indonesia's Flores region at 5:58 a.m. local time Saturday, killing at least 47 people, according to Suharyanto, head of the National Disaster Management Agency. Hours later, a 6.4-magnitude quake hit the country's western Sumatra island. The back-to-back seismic events, confirmed by CBS News reporting, flattened at least 157 houses and damaged nearly 200 more, while destroying more than 100 public facilities including schools, medical centers, and churches.

The first quake's epicenter was 42 miles north-northwest of the city of Ende in East Nusa Tenggara province. It unleashed at least 235 aftershocks, with the largest reaching magnitude 6.2. Rescuers recovered at least 47 bodies, mostly in Sikka, Manggarai, and East Manggarai districts, and at least 50 people were hospitalized.

Landslides triggered by the earthquake severed the Trans-Flores highway, a roughly 435-mile paved mountain road spanning Flores Island from Labuan Bajo to Larantuka, cutting off remote villages across six regencies. According to Fathur Rahman, head of the Search and Rescue Office in Maumere, many communities remained buried or isolated, raising the likelihood that the death toll would climb as rescue teams reached them. About 2,000 villagers in Nagekeo regency fled to temporary shelters.

Power outages in cities and villages hampered communication and complicated search and rescue operations, according to East Nusa Tenggara Police Chief Rudi Darmoko. The National Disaster Management Agency deployed a helicopter to assist with logistics and support emergency response.

Authorities initially issued a tsunami warning and urged coastal residents to higher ground. Indonesia's Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency later lifted the warning after monitoring showed no significant sea-level changes that would threaten coastal communities.

Indonesia sits on the Ring of Fire, an arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific Basin that makes the archipelago of more than 17,000 islands highly prone to earthquakes and volcanic activity. A 1992 earthquake triggered a tsunami that killed about 2,500 people on Flores. In 2018, a 7.5-magnitude quake spawned a large localized tsunami that wiped out coastal areas, killing more than 4,400 people. In December 2004, a magnitude 9.1 earthquake off Sumatra spawned a tsunami that killed 230,000 people across a dozen countries.