Before dawn on August 15, the earth shifted violently beneath eastern Indonesia's Flores Island, as a 7.7-magnitude earthquake — shallow enough to be felt as a prolonged, terrifying minute of shaking — claimed at least two lives and set hundreds fleeing toward higher ground. A tsunami warning rose and fell within hours, a brief but sobering reminder that for a nation straddling the Pacific Ring of Fire, the threat of catastrophic loss is never far from the surface. Indonesia has buried its dead from earthquakes before, in numbers that stagger the imagination, and so even a contained event carr
7.7-magnitude quake kills two in eastern Indonesia; tsunami warning lifted
Two people killed in the earthquake; hundreds evacuated from coastal areas; hospital patients fled facilities; extent of injuries and displacement still being assessed.