Jakarta, Sep 13 (DPA) A series of powerful aftershocks rattled Indonesia’s Sumatra Island Thursday, panicking thousands of residents who stayed outdoors overnight after an initial magnitude 8.4 earthquake that left at least nine people dead and dozens injured, officials said.
Thursday’s first quake caused extensive damage in the city of Padang in western Sumatra, its mayor said.
“Many buildings collapsed after this morning’s quake,” Mayor Fauzi Bahar told Jakarta-based Elshinta radio. “We’re still trying to find out about victims.”
The Meteorology and Geophysics Agency in Jakarta twice issued tsunami warnings Thursday morning after two strong aftershocks hit at 6.49 a.m. (23.49 GMT Wednesday) and 8.26 a.m. (01.26 GMT) as rescue workers were speeding to affected areas to assess the destruction from the magnitude 8.4 tremor.
Both tsunami warnings were lifted when no waves materialised following the aftershocks – the first measuring 7.8 and the second 6.7 on the Richter scale, officials said.
The US Geological Survey said the first quake Thursday was centred about 200 km north-west of Bengkulu, a coastal city in south-western Sumatra. It occurred at a shallow depth of about 10 km, and it could be felt as far away as Singapore, where it reportedly caused tall buildings to sway.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii warned that the first quake Thursday had the potential to generate a regional tsunami along coasts within 960 km of its epicentre. It advised authorities to take immediate action to evacuate coastal areas.
The second aftershock was centred 130 km southwest of West Sumatra’s coastal district town of Painan at a depth of 46 km, the US Geological Survey said.
Wednesday’s earthquake shook South-East Asia at 6.10 p.m. (11.10 GMT), collapsing hundreds of homes and buildings across Sumatra. That tremor triggered a small non-destructive tsunami off Padang on the west-central coast of Sumatra, the Indonesian island ravaged by the 2004 tsunami.
A tsunami watch was issued for wide areas of the region and nations as far away as Sri Lanka. Indonesia issued a tsunami watch and a second one after an aftershock struck less than four hours later. Both were later called off.
Rustam Pakaya of the Indonesian Health Ministry’s Crisis Centre in Jakarta told DPA that nine people were killed and nearly 50 others injured in Bengkulu and West Sumatra provinces in the magnitude 8.4 quake. He said he feared the death count could rise.
Thousands of homes and other buildings across Sumatra were flattened by the quakes and aftershocks, which hit at the beginning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
A United Nations relief team flew to Bengkulu Thursday morning with humanitarian supplies and planned to conduct a recovery assessment of the area. Bengkulu was also heavily damaged by an earthquake several years ago.
In Padang, the provincial capital of West Sumatra, three people were buried alive under debris and efforts were under way to rescue them. In many places, phone lines and electricity were down.
The quake was powerful enough to slosh the water out of swimming pools in Jakarta, hundreds of kilometres away, and scare office workers into racing out of their high-rise towers in Malaysia and Singapore.
In the Indonesian capital, the quake triggered panic among employees and residents in high-rise buildings with at least two people reported to have fainted and countless more fleeing into the streets.
The quake that struck Wednesday evening was initially measured at 8.2 on the Richter scale before being raised to 8.4 by the US Geological Survey.
That tremor and its subsequent panic was a flashback to Dec 26, 2004, when a magnitude-9 earthquake triggered a tsunami that killed 230,000 people in 14 Indian Ocean countries, claiming 177,000 people alone in Indonesia’s Aceh province, which lies on the northern tip of Sumatra.