A magnitude 5.6 earthquake struck Indonesia’s West Java province on Monday, killing 46 people, the national disaster agency said, as rescue workers and authorities worked to determine the full extent of damage. .
The earthquake hit the town of Cianjur, about 75 km southeast of the capital Jakarta, at a depth of 10 km, the meteorological and geophysical agency (BMKG) said, adding there was no possibility of a tsunami.
The head of the disaster agency (BNPB) told a news conference that 46 people had died and up to 700 were injured.
Herman Suherman, a government official in Cianjur, told the media that some residents were trapped in the rubble of collapsed buildings. The Metro TV news channel showed what appeared to be hundreds of victims being treated in a hospital parking lot.
Several houses and an Islamic boarding school were damaged, while electricity in the area went out, disrupting communications, the disaster agency said.
Footage from Metro TV showed some buildings in Cianjur reduced almost entirely to rubble as residents huddled outside.
Muchlis, who was in Cianjur when the quake hit, said he felt “a big tremor” and that the walls and ceiling of his office were damaged.
“I was very shocked. I feared there was going to be another earthquake,” Muchlis told Metro TV, adding that people ran out of their homes in panic.
In the two hours after the earthquake, 25 aftershocks were recorded, the BMKG said, adding that there was a risk of landslides, especially in case of heavy rain.
The earthquake was felt across Jakarta, shaking buildings and furniture, and some people left their offices in the central business district, Reuters witnesses said.
Indonesia straddles the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, a highly seismically active zone where different plates of the Earth’s crust meet, causing earthquakes and volcanoes.
In 2004, a magnitude 9.1 earthquake on Indonesia’s northern island of Sumatra triggered a tsunami that hit 14 countries, killing 226,000 people along the Indian Ocean coast, more than half of them in Indonesia.
Source: CNN Brasil
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