UAE expats escape death during Indonesia earthquake

After waiting in a queue for seven hours, Mulraney and her friend managed to get on a boat.

An Abu Dhabi expat has described how she and her friend narrowly escaped death after a powerful earthquake hit Indonesia on August 5.
Irish expat Patricia Mulraney, 25, and her friend, Leona Reynolds, were on a speed boat enroute the Gili Trawangan Island, when the 6.9-magnitude hit Bali, Lombok and neighbouring islands, causing giant waves to nearly capsize their boat. Al least 142 people have been killed because of the earthquake, mainly from debris of collapsing buildings.
Speaking to Khaleej Times from the Ngurah Rai International Airport in Bali, Mulraney has described the horror of being stranded on the island after the earthquake hit the area, along with thousands of other tourists and locals who did not have a way of escaping the island as there weren't enough boats or rescue teams available.
"As we were in the speedboat, heading to the island, a giant wave hit us and it nearly tipped over our boat. It was very scary. We didn't know that it was an earthquake and just thought of it to be a very bad storm," Mulraney said, who arrived in Indonesia on July 29 for a holiday with her friend.
"The driver asked us to get off in the water and we had to swim to the shore. It was an absolutely chaotic situation. The locals were screaming and shouting and we had no idea as to what was going on."
After Mulraney and her friend learned from an English-speaker that an Earthquake had hit, they tried to get on one of the small boats which were evacuating people. Rumours around the island quickly circulated that another powerful earthquake was going to hit the same evening.
"More than 20 locals were all trying to pile in one single small boat. People were literally fighting and pulling on each other to get on the boat and throwing them into the water," she said, adding how some locals were even trying to charge tourists to take them to the main land.
"The injured were meant to get on the boats first. One of the men was pushed off a boat even though he was injured on his head and was in a wheelchair. I was on the phone with my mum and all she could hear was screaming in the background. One boat had docked and within a second it was sinking because there were so many people who were trying to get on it. There were people hanging on the side of the boat. One woman got trampled on. And they were trying to push away anyone who was a tourist," Mulraney conveyed.
After waiting in a queue for seven hours, Mulraney and her friend managed to get on a boat, which evacuated them to a bigger ship and then on to the airport.
"We were glad to be able to get on the boats. The locals were going crazy. The police were strolling around the beach and they completely ignored me. I think it was more of being unaware about what was going on, and that was scary. But there were also genuinely nice people.  One man at the hotel, for example, cooked food for everyone on the island," she said.
Mulraney and Reynolds were initially scheduled to fly back to Abu Dhabi on August 8, however, because of the earthquake; they flew in last night (August 7, 6:00pm, Indonesia time).
"There is a warnings that another earthquake is going to hit, so we want to leave as soon as possible," Mulraney had added.
sarwat@khaleejtimes.com
 

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