Earthquake brings down houses on Indonesia’s Sumatra

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

By Sajid

PADANG: Latest updates about Earthquake brings down houses on Indonesia’s Sumatra, A strong earthquake of magnitude 7.9 struck off the city of Padang on the coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra island on Wednesday, damaging houses, bringing down bridges and starting fires, a witness said.

The quake was felt around the region, with some high-rise buildings in the neighbouring city state of Singapore, 275 miles (440 km) away, evacuating their staff.

A regional tsunami warning was issued, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre and Japan’s meteorological agency said. It was unclear if there were any casualties.

“Hundreds of houses have been damaged along the road. There are some fires, bridges are cut and there is extreme panic here maybe because water pipes are broken and there is flooding in the streets,” said a witness in the city.

Phone lines were down.

The depth of the tsunami was measured at 85 km, the United States Geological Survey said.

Indonesia is situated in a belt of intense seismic activity known as the “Pacific Ring of Fire”. The U.S. Geological Survey put the magnitude of the quake at 7.9.

A series of tsunamis earlier smashed into the Pacific island nations of American and Western Samoa killing possibly more than 100 people, some washed out to sea, destroying villages and injuring hundreds, officials said on Wednesday.

Padang, the capital of Indonesia’s West Sumatra province, sits on one of the world’s most active fault lines along the “Ring of Fire” where the Indo-Australia plate grinds against the Eurasia plate to create regular earth tremors and sometimes quakes.

A 9.15 magnitude quake, with its epicentre roughly 600 km (373 miles) northwest of Padang, caused the 2004 tsunami which killed 232,000 people in Indonesia’s Aceh province, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, and other countries across the Indian Ocean.

Geologists have long said Padang, with a population of 900,000, may one day be destroyed by a huge earthquake because of its location.

“Padang sits right in front of the area with the greatest potential for an 8.9 magnitude earthquake,” said Danny Hilman Natawidjaja, a geologist at the Indonesian Science Institute, earlier this year.

“The entire city could drown,” in a tsunami triggered by such a quake, he warned.