Quake flattens homes
JAKARTA: Rescue workers were rushing to northern Sulawesi yesterday after a massive earthquake near the coast killed at least four people, demolished hundreds of homes, and briefly triggered a tsunami warning.
The 7.5-magnitude quake in the early hours of the morning - one of the biggest to hit Indonesia since a 9.1-magnitude temblor in Sumatra killed hundreds of thousands four years ago - sparked panic as a tsunami alert was issued by the authorities.
Thousands fled homes, hotels and even hospitals, with many desperately carrying crying children and valuables, although the tsunami warning was withdrawn half an hour later.
Around 60 people are believed to have been hurt, but the number of dead and injured is likely to rise as rescue workers arrive in remote areas to assess the situation on the ground.
‘We’re sending teams there to assist with the emergency efforts. The local governments said for the time being they have enough medicines and enough medical personnel,’ Mr Rustam Pakaya, head of the Health Ministry’s crisis centre in Jakarta, told The Straits Times yesterday.
He said the crisis centre had received reports of a person killed in Gorontalo province and three others were killed in Buol district of Central Sulawesi province.
About 800 houses are known to have been damaged, with many of them reduced to rubble.
But national disaster management agency spokesman Priyadi Kardono told The Straits Times: ‘Aid has only arrived at towns and the surroundings. Efforts to reach remote areas in the northern coast of Sulawesi are still underway.’
Communications with the more remote areas were sketchy and damage or casualty assessments will take time to be reported, the officials said.
Heavy rains in Gorontalo yesterday affected efforts to bring aid to the displaced residents.
The quake struck 136km north-west of the city of Gorontalo, at a depth of 21km beneath the sea yesterday at 1am local time, according to the United States Geological Survey.
Gorantalo resident Robert Bano told the Associated Press that the quake shook his house for more than two minutes, knocking paintings from the wall. He said he grabbed his crying children and ran outside.
A witness in the city of Poso said patients from at least one hospital were evacuated.
A few guests streaming from Paradiso Hotel in Gorontalo fainted out of fear, Indonesia’s state news agency Antara reported.
A magnitude-9.1 earthquake off the western coast of Sumatra on Dec 26, 2004 triggered a tsunami that killed more than 200,000 people in Indonesia, Thailand, India and other countries around the Indian Ocean.
Indonesia is located on the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire - a 40,000km zone of frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that encircles the Pacific Ocean.
It gets from 6,000 to 7,000 earthquakes of magnitude 4 or above every year, but only about 70 affect residents because the rest are in remote areas, according to Indonesia’s meteorology and geophysics agency BMG.
The latest quake comes just days after Indonesia launched a 1.4 trillion rupiah (S$186 million) high-tech tsunami warning system in a bid to prevent a repeat of the tragedies of 2004.
At the time of its launch, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was quoted as saying that Indonesia was ‘living on the edge’.
