A tsunami slammed Indonesia without warning, killing at least 222 and injuring hundreds more
A tsunami struck the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra Saturday evening, killing at least 222 people and injuring at least 800 more.
The wall of water swept in without warning and is thought to have been caused by undetected sea floor landslides from an eruption of the Krakatoa volcano, located in the strait between the islands.
Indonesia also lacks a comprehensive tsunami warning system, explained Sutopo Purwo Nugroho of the country's National Disaster Mitigation Agency. "We need multi-hazard early warning system, and we need lots of it," Nugroho said.
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Rescue efforts are ongoing Sunday, and the death toll is expected to rise. This comes just a few months after an earthquake and tsunami on another Indonesian island, Sulawesi, in September killed 2,256 people.
Watch a video of Saturday's destruction via Al Jazeera below, including the moment the tsunami struck a concert on the beach. (Warning: These images are disturbing.) Bonnie Kristian
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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