Help the people of Lombok

To all my friends and family,

As you know on Sunday evening we had a 7.0 magnitude earthquake (followed by a tsunami warning as well as hundreds of smaller earthquakes and a few larger since) that hit the north of Lombok including the surrounding area where I live.

At the time when the earthquake hit, I was sitting on our sofa feeding Maya to sleep. I felt a gentle rumbling of the ground, at first unsure of what it was. As the vibrating intensified, I rushed into the back garden, all the lights went out, smothering us in darkness and I heard smashing and tumbling all around us.

I could hear my neighbours calling my name so I ran through the house and met them out front, we discussed the damage to our houses. I borrowed a phone to call Dayat, who then told me that a tsunami warning had been issued.

Terrified, I ran into our house to pack a bag.

We left of BTN housing area and managed to run into Dayat, who had abandoned the car in a car park and borrowed a motorbike so as to get to us.

He took us in search of a hill high enough to protect us from a tsunami. We drove and drove, passing different camps of people, buying bottles and bottles of water to distribute, filling up the petrol tank of the motorbike to full.

Once we got to the hill camp, we stayed until the tsunami warning had been lifted. We then left to try to reach Dayat’s family. The roads were chockablock with people trying to flee to central Lombok. It was so lucky we had a motorbike because if we hadn’t we would have been stuck for god knows how long. We could just hear ambulances and people chatting and children crying.

When we reached Dayats family we found they were all safe and that the damage wasn’t as bad as in our area. We stayed with them for the night, sleeping in the street under tar-pooling. After shocks were felt all night and the next day. The next few nights we camped in a nearby rice field underneath a tent made from tarp. Luckily we were able to reach our house to pick up warmer bedding, the car and return the motorbike.

Now, we are staying the Bandung, Java, along with a friend also from the UK and her family. We deemed Lombok too dangerous to stay and the nights were freezing. I was so scared that maya would get sick and go untreated at the already full to capacity hospitals.

Since leaving there has been more earthquakes, notably another big one measuring 6.2. To which Toni who is still in Lombok saw a building totally collapse right in front of her eyes. My nanny is still in Lombok asking me to borrow mattresses from my house but we have already given them to daughter daughter carissa who is still in lombok - less affected area - and family. Anyway access to my housing area has been blocked because of risk of the buildings damaging.

Because of this I have potentially lost my home - even if I haven’t yet, do I want to stay in a place that has cracks all around the ceiling that could potentially collapse at the next quake and I have lost my business - at least for now.

Even though my story sounds awful we are so incredibly lucky. Many people have died including friends and their families and many people are injured. On top of that many people are living up on the mountains with no food or water soley relying on donations to tide them through. We have gone into a state of frenzy; people are stealing food because they are hungry and in retaliation people are attacking back and in one case people have even been killed for stealing. This isn't normal behavior of the people here, people are desperate, traumatised and hungry.

Please if every one of you could donate even £1 we can use this towards providing rice, clean water and blankets and shelter.

We will divide this money between different areas and groups of people and different charities in lombok helping the people there.

We have already commenced large shops to buy rice, long life vegetables, noodles, fresh water, warm blankets, tents and bedding and distributed everything we have bought to various areas in our  Central Lombok hometown. 

We will distribute the fundraised amount gradually, ensuring that there is enough to contribute towards the clean up process of building debris and rubbish in the main tourism areas at first, once the earthquakes, tremors and after shocks have finished. We MUST get our Island back on track and looking presentable and functional so that we get our tourism industry and tourists back! 


Thank you!

Love, 

Lombok, Hannah & Rahmat (Dayat)