Indonesia Earthquake Kills 11, Hurts 65
Date: 29-Nov-04
Country: INDONESIA
Author: Emmy Zumaidar
A series of aftershocks continued to rattle the coastal town of Nabire, 3,000 km (1,900 miles) northeast of Jakarta, hours after the morning quake that measured 6.4 on the Richter scale by the National Earthquake Centre.
"We're still in panic," Jahron, a pilot who lives in Nabire, told Reuters by telephone.
People were setting up tents outside their houses because they were afraid to be inside, he said.
"Eleven people have died, including three children, and 30 are now being treated at hospitals," Paminto, a coordinator at the Health Crisis Centre in Jayapura, the provincial capital to the east of Nabire, told Reuters by telephone.
Lieutenant-Colonel Toto Surono, a Jakarta-based army official, said at least 65 people were injured, although not all of them where taken to hospitals.
Nabire airport had been closed due to damage, said Slamet Suyitno, an official at the Meteorology and Geophysics agency in Jayapura.
"Planes cannot land, even the smallest plane. The tower might be collapsed. The Indosat building and several churches collapsed," he said.
Indosat (PT Indonesian Satellite Corp Tbk) is the country's second-largest telecommunications firm.
The epicentre of the earthquake, which struck at 9:25 a.m. (0225 GMT), was on land, some 17 km (10 miles) to the south of Nabire.
The Hong Kong observatory and Geoscience Australia recorded the earthquake at 7.2 on the Richter scale.
Earthquakes often occur in Indonesia, an archipelago of 17,000 islands that lies along the Pacific Ring of Fire where plate boundaries intersect and volcanoes regularly erupt.
A quake in the Nabire area in February killed at least 37 people.
In December 1992, an earthquake measuring 6.8 on the open-ended Richter scale killed about 2,200 people on the island of Flores southwest of Nabire. Many of those who died were killed by massive waves triggered by the earthquake.
(Additional reporting by Tomi Soetjipto)