Indonesia Lifts Tsunami Warning After Sumatra Quake
Date: 26-Feb-08
Country: INDONESIA
The US Geological Survey said the quake, which was felt in neighbouring Singapore, had a magnitude of 7.3 and was at a depth of 35 km (21.75 miles).
Indonesia's meteorology agency, which lifted a tsunami warning after about 45 minutes, put the quake at a shallower depth of 10 km.
"There are no reports of damages or casualties yet. When the quake happened, people stormed out of the police station. We still need to check with the police station on Muko-Muko (nearest to the epicentre) whether there has been any damage," Hassanudin, a police officer in Bengkulu town, told Reuters.
"People panicked, but there was no big movement towards higher ground, although there was a tsunami warning."
The epicentre of the quake was about 300 km northwest of Bengkulu and around 160 km southwest of Padang.
In Padang, hospital patients were evacuated from their buildings for safety despite heavy rain.
The same area was hit by a more powerful quake of magnitude 8.4 in September last year that killed at least 25 people and toppled thousands of homes.
Rustam Pakaya, head of the health ministry's crisis centre in Jakarta, also said that no damage had been reported, although the quake was felt strongly in Muko-Muko, Bengkulu, Jambi and Padang.
"People in Muko-Muko were celebrating the local government's anniversary in the open area and when the quake hit, people panicked as the government issued a tsunami warning. Some of them even climbed nearby trees," Pakaya said.
Indonesia suffers from frequent earthquakes as it lies in the so-called "Pacific Ring of Fire", an area of intense seismic activity where a number of tectonic plates collide.
Last Wednesday, a strong quake hit off Aceh province in northern Sumatra, killing at least three people and damaging buildings on the nearby island of Simeulue.
A huge earthquake measuring more than 9 struck off Sumatra on Dec. 26, 2004, causing a massive tsunami and more than 230,000 deaths in countries across the region.
(Reporting by Harry Suhartono, Adhityani Arga and Mita Valina Liem, additional reporting by John Nedi in Padang; Writing by Ed Davies; Editing by Alex Richardson)
