NZer caught up in Lombok: ’Houses had caved in’

File photo.

A New Zealander caught up on the Lombok earthquake has described helping the injured and dying.

The 6.9 magnitude earthquake struck on Sunday night and has killed at least 105 people.

Charlotte Fenwick was having dinner with friends when the earthquake hit.

"We were moving metre to metre side to side, up and down, people were screaming and running away from any structures and trees."

She immediately began to help people, who were impaired in a state of shock.

"One of the guys that I was with started having a full-blown panic attack ... so I sat down the ground and had him lie on the ground and lean back against my body and got him to calm down using some yoga breathing practices," says Charlotte.

"I had to go home and get my friend and she was immovable with shock as well."

She then managed with her group to cycle across the island to the town where people grouping and helped the injured at the emergency triage centre.

"We saw walls that had collapsed, houses that had caved in on themselves, people were screaming, people were injured.

"Once I got to the triage centre I stayed there for the rest of the night tending to people who were very, very seriously wounded.

"We first tried to do what we could to stop any heavy bleeding, apply pressure bandages, for those with broken bones we made makeshift splints out of pieces of wood that we found."

Other volunteers went around the island to chemists, trying to get saline drips, painkillers and bandages.

She says two people at the triage centre died overnight while two did not make it on their way to the centre.

Charlotte was evacuated to Bali last night.

Video and still images after the quake showed hundreds of tourists on the Gili Islands flocking to the beach to be evacuated.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said there was no indication any New Zealanders were injured.

There are currently 737 New Zealanders registered on SafeTravel as being in Indonesia and 28 registered in Lombok.

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