At least seven people were killed and 85 injured on Friday in a 6.2-magnitude earthquake that struck off the north of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, authorities said.
The tremor came minutes after a smaller one caused residents to evacuate their homes.
“We all fled our homes” after the first tremor, he told the AFP Prama Agustino, who evacuated her house in panic with her one-year-old baby.
The earthquake occurred at 01:35 GMT at a depth of 12 kilometers and 70 kilometers from the city of Bukittingi, in the province of West Sumatra, reported the United States Geological Survey (USGS).
Most of the victims are residents of the Pasaman and West Pasaman districts, some 20 kilometers from the epicenter, according to the head of the National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB), Suharyanto, who, like many Indonesians, has only one name. .
Indonesia’s meteorological agency asked residents to stay away from the slopes for fear of landslides during the rainy season.
No tsunami warning was issued, but the tremor was felt in the neighboring provinces of Riau and North Sumatra and as far away as Malaysia and Singapore.
Some images show partially collapsed houses in the city of Pasaman, near the epicenter, with bricks falling to the ground and walls destroyed.
Other television images also show the evacuation of patients from a hospital in Padang, the capital of West Sumatra province.
Alim Bazar, head of the agency in charge of disaster management in Pasaman, told AFP that the walls of some buildings had cracked.
“The mayor called and ordered the second and third floors of each building to be evacuated,” he said.
Indonesia is located in the so-called “Ring of Fire” of the Pacific, where earthquakes are frequent.
In 2004, a 9.1-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Sumatra, triggering a tsunami that claimed 220,000 lives across the region, including 170,000 in Indonesia. (I)
Source: Eluniverso
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