ALL FIVE Spanish tourists trapped in the volcanic national park of Rinjani, Lombok island after the recent earthquake have now been rescued, Spain's foreign office reports, and they are all in good health.
Earlier today (Tuesday), Indonesian authorities confirmed it had evacuated 543 hikers from the mountain range, a popular holidaymaker attraction, after the tremor blocked the entrances and left them unable to get out.
Only 10 climbers, all Indonesians, were said to be still awaiting rescue and are expected to be airlifted down tomorrow.
Among those trapped were 189 foreigners, 173 Indonesians, 31 tour guides and 150 porters, according to National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugrohooy.
So far, one visitor to the Rinjani volcano is known to have died, an Indonesian man.
It was initially believed that as many as 689 may have been stranded up the Rinjani, based upon the national park's entrance register, but the final total is now thought to have been about 553.
All foreigners trapped there have now been safely removed.
The earthquake on Lombok island on Sunday reached 6.4 on the Richter scale and was even felt on the island of Bali.
It caused damage to around 1,000 buildings, forced the evacuation of over 5,000 people, and provoked avalanches, rockfalls and landslides.
So far, 16 people – a Malaysian woman and 15 Indonesians – are known to have died.
National president Joko Widodo has visited the evacuated residents and issued an emergency directive to allow human and financial resources to be freed up to help in the affected areas.
Indonesia sits on the part of the world known as the Pacific Ring of Fire, an area of high volcanic and sismic activity.
The Rinjani – Indonesia's second-highest volcano, at 3,726 metres above sea-level – is active, and the country is struck by around 7,000 earthquakes a year.
Most of these are mild and barely felt, if at all.
The last major quake in Indonesia, in the north-west of the island of Sumatra, sparked the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004 which killed over 280,000 people in about a dozen countries bordering the Indian Ocean, with most of the fatalities occurring in Indonesia itself.
