THOUSANDS of people were still waiting for aid on the Indonesian island of Flores as the country celebrated its 81st Independence Day today, days after a powerful earthquake killed at least 54 people, injured dozens and damaged hundreds of homes and other buildings.

Many residents spent the day mourning victims, searching for loved ones and waiting for aid to arrive to communities still cut off by the deadly quake.

More than 1,300 homes were damaged when the quake struck East Nusa Tenggara province on Saturday.

Some 5,000 people were forced into temporary shelters and 135 people were injured, according to the National Disaster Management Agency.

The province’s governor declared a 14-day state of emergency on Sunday.

The quake occurred at a depth of six miles early on Saturday, according to the United States Geological Survey, and residents fled in panic as tsunami warnings were issued and later lifted. 

Thousands of people on Flores camped outside collapsed homes under tarpaulin tents overnight into Monday, sleeping outside because of the danger of more aftershocks.

Rasyid Jafar, a clothing trader in the village of Reo, the hardest-hit area in Manggarai regency, said: “My house is just rubble now.

“We need food, medicine and clean water urgently.”

Another villager in Reo, Mariana Tewu, said: “We have nothing left. Why isn’t there a public kitchen?” 

Indonesia, an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands, is prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions because of its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a horseshoe-shaped arc of seismic faults and volcanoes.

In 2018, a magnitude 7.5 earthquake triggered a tsunami on the island of Sulawesi that killed more than 4,400 people. 

In 2004, a magnitude 9.1 quake off Sumatra unleashed a tsunami that killed about 230,000 people in a dozen countries, nearly 170,000 in Aceh province alone.