A magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck off the north coast of Flores Island, East Nusa Tenggara, on 15 August 2026 at 05:58 WITA (04:58 WIB). USGS placed the epicenter about 68 km north-northwest of Ende at a depth of 10 km, while BMKG placed it about 30 km northeast of Mbay at a depth of 15 km. The shallow depth concentrated damage across Flores’ western and central regencies. A tsunami warning covering four provinces was issued within minutes and lifted the same morning, at 08:30 WITA (07:30 WIB), after 1.6 m waves were recorded at Reo in Manggarai. By 05:00 WIB on 18 August, an aftershock sequence of 2,119 events had been recorded, the largest being M6.2, which BMKG expects to decay over three to four weeks.
The confirmed death toll rose from 40 on the first evening to 68 by Monday, 17 August, with 213 injured, as landslide-blocked roads were cleared and isolated regencies reached. It has held at 68 since Monday evening, and search teams report no missing persons, though BNPB continues to treat the figures as provisional while Palue Island and parts of Nagekeo are assessed. Housing damage is counted on two official bases, and the two do not match: BNPB reports more than 4,500 homes damaged, while the provincial disaster agency BPBD NTT records 7,968 houses damaged from light to severe, along with 744 public facilities and infrastructure. More than 19,000 people were sheltering in tents, evacuation centers and makeshift camps three days after the earthquake. These are 18 August morning-snapshot figures; later same-day briefings revised deaths, injuries, displacement, and housing upward on differing agency bases (see Key Limitations).
As of the cut-off, no authority has published an affected-population figure. Modeling the USGS shaking surface against gridded population places about 1.71 million people under damaging shaking at MMI VI or above, including 718,000 under very strong shaking at MMI VII or above. Severe shaking at MMI VIII reached 36,400 people in five subdistricts: Reok and Reok Barat in Manggarai; Lamba Leda and Sambi Rampas in East Manggarai; and Alok in Sikka. The severely shaken subdistricts fall in Manggarai and East Manggarai, the two regencies with the highest confirmed death tolls.
Damage hit both tiers of the health system. Three of 21 hospitals were severely damaged, including the Nagekeo RSUD, and 68 of 190 community health centers were damaged, leaving one hospital and 19 health centers non-functional. Field hospitals have been deployed to Ruteng and Nagekeo. As of the cut-off, the response has been nationally led and nationally resourced, and the government had not requested or accepted international search-and-rescue assistance.
The earthquake struck one of Indonesia's poorest and most nutritionally vulnerable provinces, a poverty rate well above the national average and the country's highest child stunting prevalence, at the forecast peak of a strong El Niño dry season.
The methodology utilized in this report has been jointly developed with GiveDirectly.
