Death toll hits 75 as earthquake rocks Sumatra
Source: Agencies |
October 1, 2009, Thursday
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A POWERFUL earthquake struck off the city of Padang on Indonesia's Sumatra island yesterday, killing at least 75 people and trapping thousands under rubble, officials said.
The death toll was likely to rise as many buildings in the city of 900,000 people had collapsed, Vice President Jusuf Kalla told a late night news conference in Jakarta.
TV footage showed devastation, with piles of rubble and smashed houses after the magnitude 7.6 earthquake, which caused widespread panic across the city.
Rustam Pakaya, the head of the health ministry's disaster center in Jakarta, said "thousands of people are trapped in the rubble of buildings."
The main hospital had collapsed, roads were cut by landslides and Metro Television said the roof of Padang airport had caved in. Thousands were expected to spend the night in the open while a full assessment of the damage would need to wait until daybreak.
Kalla said the government was preparing for an emergency response of up to two months.
Welfare Minister Aburizal Bakrie said authorities should prepare for the worst, adding damage could be on a par with an earthquake in the central Java city of Yogyakarta in 2006 that killed 5,000 people and damaged or destroyed 150,000 homes.
The quake was felt around the region, with some high-rise buildings in Singapore, 440 kilometers to the northeast, evacuating staff. Office buildings also shook in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur.
"Hundreds of houses have been damaged along the road. There are some fires, bridges are cut and there is extreme panic here," said a witness in the city, who also said broken water pipes had triggered flooding.
A resident called Adi later told Metro Television there was devastation around him.
"For now I can't see dead bodies, just collapsed houses. Some half destroyed, others completely. People are standing around too scared to go back inside. They fear a tsunami," said Adi.
Sumatra is home to some of the country's largest oil fields as well as its oldest liquefied natural gas terminal, although there were no immediate reports of damage to those facilities.
Padang, capital of Indonesia's West Sumatra province, sits on one of the world's most active fault lines along the "Ring of Fire" where the Indo-Australia plate grinds against the Eurasia plate to create regular tremors and sometimes quakes.
The death toll was likely to rise as many buildings in the city of 900,000 people had collapsed, Vice President Jusuf Kalla told a late night news conference in Jakarta.
TV footage showed devastation, with piles of rubble and smashed houses after the magnitude 7.6 earthquake, which caused widespread panic across the city.
Rustam Pakaya, the head of the health ministry's disaster center in Jakarta, said "thousands of people are trapped in the rubble of buildings."
The main hospital had collapsed, roads were cut by landslides and Metro Television said the roof of Padang airport had caved in. Thousands were expected to spend the night in the open while a full assessment of the damage would need to wait until daybreak.
Kalla said the government was preparing for an emergency response of up to two months.
Welfare Minister Aburizal Bakrie said authorities should prepare for the worst, adding damage could be on a par with an earthquake in the central Java city of Yogyakarta in 2006 that killed 5,000 people and damaged or destroyed 150,000 homes.
The quake was felt around the region, with some high-rise buildings in Singapore, 440 kilometers to the northeast, evacuating staff. Office buildings also shook in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur.
"Hundreds of houses have been damaged along the road. There are some fires, bridges are cut and there is extreme panic here," said a witness in the city, who also said broken water pipes had triggered flooding.
A resident called Adi later told Metro Television there was devastation around him.
"For now I can't see dead bodies, just collapsed houses. Some half destroyed, others completely. People are standing around too scared to go back inside. They fear a tsunami," said Adi.
Sumatra is home to some of the country's largest oil fields as well as its oldest liquefied natural gas terminal, although there were no immediate reports of damage to those facilities.
Padang, capital of Indonesia's West Sumatra province, sits on one of the world's most active fault lines along the "Ring of Fire" where the Indo-Australia plate grinds against the Eurasia plate to create regular tremors and sometimes quakes.
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