| Powerful quake shakes Indonesia |
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| Wednesday, 12 September 2007 | ||||||
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A powerful earthquake has struck off the western Indonesian island of Sumatra, triggering tsunami alerts across the Indian Ocean A powerful earthquake has struck off the western Indonesian island of Sumatra, triggering tsunami alerts across the Indian Ocean.
There are reports of buildings collapsing in towns on the west coast of Sumatra, but it is not yet clear whether there are casualties. A massive undersea earthquake sparked a tsunami that killed more than 130,000 people in Indonesia in December 2004. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre issued a tsunami alert for the entire Indian Ocean region following the latest quake. It says it is not known whether a tsunami has been generated. Besides Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and a number of small islands were put on alert. Wednesday's earthquake struck at 1810 (1110 GMT), about 15km (nine miles) under the sea, some 100km (60 miles) south-west of the city of Bengkulu, the US Geological Survey said. Local media said buildings in Padang, the capital of the province of West Sumatra, and in the town of Mukomuko, had collapsed. "I saw some parts of houses crumbled to the ground but not huge damage. People ran out of their homes," Ayu Claudia, a resident of Bengkulu, told the AFP news agency before the phone went dead. Officials said it was very difficult to get clear communications with the area to make damage assessments. They are sending disaster teams from the capital Jakarta, fearing that there may be significant casualties, says the BBC's Lucy Williamson in Jakarta. There were also reports of inhabitants fleeing swaying buildings in the capital Jakarta and in Singapore. Fearful memories Our correspondent says this was the most powerful earthquake in Indonesia since the one which caused the Asian tsunami in 2004, and was dangerously shallow. The 2004 quake measured 8.9 and struck under the sea near the northern Sumatran province of Aceh, triggering a tsunami that killed more than 220,000 people around the rim of the Indian Ocean. She says quakes on this scale are rare and memories of 2004 have made the country terrified of a repeat. Indonesia, part of the seismically active Pacific "Ring of Fire", is frequently shaken by earth tremors.
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