‘Thousands trapped’ under rubble
The Jakarta Post , Padang/Medan/Pekanbaru | Thu, 10/01/2009 9:38 AM | Headlines
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JP/Irma
A powerful earthquake rattled the city of Padang, West Sumatra, on Wednesday, leaving at least 75 dead and trapping thousands under flattened buildings, officials said.
The death toll was likely to increase as many buildings, including houses, hotels, schools and shops, collapsed, Vice President Jusuf Kalla told a news conference in Jakarta after chairing an emergency meeting on the disaster response and coordination.
As communication lines were cut, the number of victims in the Pariaman regency, which is nearest to the epicenter in the Indian Ocean, are still unknown. A Pariaman native, the politician Indra Piliang, said as quoted by detik.com, “almost all houses are flattened.”
Rustam Pakaya, the head of the Health Ministry’s disaster center in Jakarta, said thousands of people were still trapped in the rubble of buildings.
The 7.6-magnitude quake sparked fires and there were power outages across the entire city. The roof of Padang’s Minangkabau Airport reportedly collapsed, forcing a temporary closure, and roads and bridges were destroyed.
Tremors were felt in Medan, Pekanbaru, Jambi, Bengkulu and other areas across Sumatra Island, as well as in Singapore and Malaysia, meteorologists and witnesses said, causing widespread panic in all affected towns.
A tsunami warning for countries around the Indian Ocean was issued after the earthquake struck Wednesday evening, but was lifted an hour and a half later.
Heavy rainfall later in the evening worsened the situation in Padang, as most victims lacked emergency tents for shelter.
Witnesses told local television and radio hundreds of houses had collapsed and a road to the coastal town of Padang was cut off, while flights were canceled to the city, airlines officials said.
TV footage showed devastation, with piles of rubble and collapsed houses in Padang.
“Hundreds of houses have been damaged, there are fires, bridges are cut and there is extreme panic here. Ruptured water pipes have triggered flooding,” said a Reuters witness in the city, before his cell phone was cut off.
The US Geological Survey said the quake had a preliminary magnitude of 7.9, and struck 50 kilometers off the coast of Sumatra.
However, the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMG) in Medan put the quake’s magnitude at 7.6.
Its epicenter was 71 kilometers under the sea off Pariaman, 70 kilometers from Padang. The quake hit at around 5:16 p.m. for about four minutes along the same fault line that spawned the massive Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004.
The Health Ministry has dispatched medical teams carrying medicine and food supplies for the quake victims. Rustam Pakaya said teams from health agencies in Medan and Palembang were on their way to West Sumatra towns.
“Tomorrow [Thursday] morning about 40 doctors, including specialists, will fly to Padang on a humanitarian mission,” Rustam said.
Another medical team will depart from Halim Perdanakusuma Airport in East Jakarta at about 6 a.m., he added.
Medan’s BMG spokesman Rifwar Kamin said the areas in North Sumatra hardest hit by the quake included Nias Island.
Although the strong temblor was felt in Medan, no casualties were reported from North Sumatra.
Widespread panic hit Pekanbaru, forcing residents, including Riau deputy governor Mambang Mit, to flee buildings to seek safety in open fields, as traffic came to a standstill at roads across the province’s capital city.
Tremors were felt in Pasir Pangarayan, the capital of Rokan Hulu regency, some 240 km from the epicenter in Pariaman. Yuslena, a schoolteacher in Rokan Hulu, said several buses had to stop because their drivers could not control them.
“The drivers were worried they would hit other vehicles so the passengers got off to seek safety,”
she said.
Residents in Padang were recently still recovering from the latest major quake in 2007.
They had also felt tremors in the 2005 quake which hit Nias, and the 2004 earthquake and tsunami in Aceh and Nias.