467 confirmed dead and 421 injured by the earthquake in Sumatra
At least 467 people were killed and 421 seriously injured by the earthquake of 7.6 magnitude on the Richter scale that hit last night west of the island, said the Ministry of Social Affairs.
The chief of staff health crisis, Rustam Pakaya, warned that “thousands of people are trapped under the rubble” of many buildings that fell like a house of cards.
The quake, measuring 7.6 degrees on the Richter scale according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), occurred at 1715 local time (11.15 Spanish time) and affected mainly the city of Padang (West Island) of about 900,000. The USGS determined that the quake’s epicenter was located about 85 kilometers deep.
The earthquake was felt in places as far away as Kuala Lumpur, capital of neighboring Malaysia. In fact, some skyscrapers in Singapore, 440 miles away, were evacuated. The Warning Center Pacific Tsunami warning canceled declared.
Fear of a tsunami
A resident of Padang told Reuters that “hundreds of houses” were affected along the road. “There are some fires, bridges are damaged and there is an extreme panic,” said the witness, who added that some pipes burst and caused flooding. Another witness called Adi explained that all around homes were partially or totally destroyed, and people feared the arrival of a tsunami. The outage and communication seriously complicated rescue efforts.
Padang, capital of West Sumatra province, is situated at the boundary between the Indo-Australian tectonic plate and Eurasian, one of the most seismically active areas on the planet. For this reason, many geologists have predicted that the city could be destroyed by an earthquake.
The earthquake that triggered the devastating tsunami of 26 December 2004 caused about 600 kilometers offshore from the northern coast of Sumatra. About 230,000 people were killed in that disaster in several Indian Ocean countries, some 170,000 in Indonesia.
“Ketsana in Vietnam
At the same time, the typhoon “Ketsana” yesterday followed his path of destruction across Southeast Asia. In Cambodia and Vietnam, the cyclone of time has caused about fifty deaths. Despite preventive evacuations, is leaving a trail of destruction similar to the last weekend in the northern Philippines, where the official toll was 246 dead.
The Vietnamese authorities reported 41 deaths yesterday in coastal and inland, offering a panorama of trees down, roofs blown up and flooded streets and houses in villages without electricity or telephone. “Ketsana” weakened and came to Laos without gusts of 183 kilometers per hour on Tuesday, touching Vietnam.
Tags: Disaster, Earthquake, Richter, Sumatra
