Quake triggers tsunami in western Indonesia

A massive earthquake killed at least 10 people, injured scores and triggered a small tsunami in western Indonesia today, authorities said.

Warnings of potentially destructive waves were issued across the Indian Ocean region.

The 8.2-magnitude quake off Sumatra island damaged malls, mosques and car dealerships along the coast and could be felt in at least four countries, with tall buildings swaying as far as 1,200 miles away.

It was followed by a series of powerful aftershocks, including a magnitude-6.6 quake that briefly triggered a second tsunami alert in Indonesia, said Suhardjono, a senior official at the local meteorological agency.

At least seven people were killed in the town of Bengkulu and surrounding areas, social affairs department official Felix Valentino told the news portal detik.com.

In Padang, 240 miles away, three bodies were pulled from badly damaged buildings, a witness said.

Excavation machinery was being used to search through the rubble for survivors.

A wave of up to 10 feet reportedly struck the city of Padang about 20 minutes after the initial quake, he said, but a communication blackout was making it difficult to get more information.

Most of the damage, however, appeared to come from the quake.

Panicked residents in Bengkulu, 250 miles up the coast, said many people fled their homes and ran inland.

“Everyone is running out of their houses in every direction,” said Wati Said, who spoke by cell phone standing outside her house. “We think our neighbourhood is high enough. God willing, if the water comes, it will not touch us here.”

“Communication is cut, we can’t call out,” she added. “I don’t know how you contacted us. Everyone is afraid.”

The quake could be felt in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, 375 miles away, where office workers streamed down the stairwells of tall, swaying buildings.

It also caused high-rises to sway in neighbouring Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.

The undersea quake hit at about 6.10pm (1210 BST), the US Geological Survey said. It was centred 80 miles south-west of Sumatra island at a depth of 18 miles.

“Earthquakes of this size have the potential to generate a widespread destructive tsunami that can affect coastlines across the entire Indian Ocean Basin,” the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said, warning that waves could hit Indonesia and Australia within an hour, and Sri Lanka and India within three hours.

It lifted the alert for Indonesia about two hours later.

About 3 1/2 hours after the quake, Thai television stations broke into their regular programming to carry an announcement read by Smith Dharmasaroja, director the National Disaster Warning Centre, to reassure people that there was no danger.

“We would like to tell people to come down from the hills. The situation has returned to normal,” he said.

In India, officials said nothing was felt in the remote Andaman and Nicobar islands, some of which are just 150 miles north of Sumatra.

The Indian government issued a tsunami alert for the islands, and officials were telling local authorities to take precautions, said Dharam Pal, the regional relief commissioner.

Sri Lanka’s Tsunami Warning Centre asked all people living close to the sea to move at least 660 feet from the coast.

In Australia, the tsunami warning was lifted after only small rises in the sea level were measured at Cocos Island and the Christmas Islands.

But officials warned residents to stay away from the ocean, warning that dangerous waves and currents could still affect beaches, harbours and rivers for several hours.

Indonesia, the world’s largest archipelago, is prone to seismic upheaval due to its location on the so-called Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of volcanos and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.

“This earthquake has occurred on the well-known Indonesian tectonic zone, which generates earthquakes of this size on a regular basis, so it comes as no surprise,” seismologist Alice Walker of the British Geological Survey said in a statement.

A massive December 26, 2004, earthquake triggered a tsunami off the coast of Sumatra that killed more than 160,000 in a dozen nations, most of them in Indonesia’s Aceh province.

The 9.0 temblor was 18 miles deep, according to USGS.