A 24-year-old Gold Coast paramedic cut short her holiday on Bali to join the relief operation after a deadly 7.0 magnitude struck the neighboring Indonesian island of Lombok on Sunday, August 5, killing hundreds and injuring thousands.

Kahla Mawby joined forces with Indonesian charity organization Project Karma to assist with search and rescue efforts.

Mawby said she felt helpless the Monday following the quake, knowing the death toll on neighboring Lombok was rising rapidly. “I was lucky to be put in contact with a guy called Glen Hulley, the chief executive of Project Karma, who had managed to get over to Lombok with his team with donations and supplies,” she said.

“The only way to get to Lombok was via air, as all the ports were ruined and boats weren’t going,” she said. “A company volunteered their helicopters and I was able to get there via air on Tuesday.”

Mawby said she spent the following days searching for missing people, combing rubble for survivors, and providing medical aid in remote villages, as tremors and aftershocks continued to shake the island. Other volunteers in her team included a retired paramedic living in Bali, and later, some fifth year medical students who had been working in hospitals in Bali.

Mawby said Lombok’s north, where she took this video, was the worst impacted due to its position on the quake’s epicentre.

“The Indonesian people are so brave, they’ve lost everything, families have been absolutely torn apart,” she said. “We are still pushing the Indonesian government in every way we can to declare this as a natural disaster so that Lombok can now work on rebuilding their community with help from foreign aid.”

Mawby said donations can be made to Project Karma’s aid efforts in Lombok via crowd funding website MyCause. Credit: Kahla Mawby via Storyful