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Earthquake leaves more than 3,000 dead in Indonesia

Many people remained buried or trapped under the rubble of collapsed buildings, while more deaths might be going unreported.

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JAKARTA/YOGYAKARTA: A powerful earthquake shook the area around Indonesia’s royal city of Yogyakarta on Saturday, killing more than 3,000 people and flattening houses and buildings near ancient heritage sites.

The epicentre of the quake — which struck around 6am local time (4:30am IST) with a magnitude of 6.2, according to the US Geological Survey — was offshore. Jakarta earthquake centre official Fauzi said there was no tsunami.

Minutes after the tremors, however, a sense of dread coursed through the wrecked city as thousands of people fled the area fearing that a tsunami was imminent. The early-morning disaster caught most residents indoors, trapping many in their beds.

“The number keeps climbing by the hour because evacuation is still in process,” said Desmawati, an official at the social affairs ministry’s disaster task force in Jakarta. She said 1,700 people had suffered serious injuries while 872 were slightly hurt. Hospital officials said the dead had generally suffered head injuries and broken bones from collapsing buildings.

As darkness fell in the main island of Java, thousands prepared to spend the night outside ruined homes or in the grounds of mosques, churches, and schools. “It is pitch dark,” said Tjut Nariman, who lives on the outskirts of the city. “We have to use candles and we are sitting outside now. We are too scared to sleep inside. The radio keeps saying there will be more quakes. We still feel the tremors.”

Yogyakarta is in the heartland of Indonesia’s main island of Java and stands near Mount Merapi, a volcano that has been on course for a major eruption this month.

Elliott Shiff, a producer with Discovery Channel Canada, was filming volcanic activity at Mount Merapi at the time of the earthquake.

“All of a sudden there were major tremors, and it seemed as if the volcano was about to explode,” Shiff told the media on Saturday.

Shiff said when headed back to Yogyakarta - about a half-hour drive away - he saw “sheer panic in the streets”.

“A lot of buildings collapsed. As we were driving back towards the centre of the city, all of a sudden there were hundreds of motorcycles and cars heading in our direction.”

A vulcanologist in Yogyakarta said the quake was not caused by the volcano, but Merapi’s activity increased after the shock. “After the earthquake there were more clouds coming out of the crater,” said Subandrio, Merapi section head at the Centre for Vulcanological Research and Technology Department.

Yogyakarta’s royal palaces and the nearby Borobudur temple complex are prime attractions for domestic and foreign tourists, while many foreigners study the Indonesian language at schools in the city which offer intensive courses.

Early reports from the region suggested that Borobudur is intact, although several nearby structures collapsed. The main building of another tourist site near Jakarta, the Prambanan Hindu temple, was unaffected but some of its smaller structures were damaged.

Indonesia sits on Asia-Pacific’s so-called ‘Ring of Fire’, which is marked by heavy volcanic and tectonic activity. The country’s Aceh province was hardest hit by the December 2004 Indian Ocean quake and tsunami, which left around 1,70,000 people dead or missing. A major quake in March 2005 killed about 1,000 people on Nias island and nearby areas off Sumatra.

Yogyakarta is about 25km north of the Indian Ocean coast and 440km east of Jakarta. The distance from the national capital is impeding relief work in a city that is contending with collapsed infrastructure.

“One of the big frustrations is that the airport and the runways have been damaged and planes can’t land there,” said Arifin Muhadi of the Indonesian Red Cross. “It will be a problem for those agencies that don’t have in-built infrastructure and supplies on the ground nearby.”

Relief workers are concerned that the process of transporting supplies by road will delay disaster management. “It’s a long haul from Jakarta. Supplies will have to be trucked in from other airports in the area that are several hours away,” Muhadi said.

Meanwhile, Japan’s Meteorological Agency said on Saturday that there is no danger of a tsunami.

Catastrophe at Dawn

  • Earthquake of 6.2 magnitude struck areas adjoining Yogyakarta just before 6am (4.30am IST) on Saturday
  • Tourists from all over the world throng Yogyakarta’s palaces and the nearby Borobudur temple
  • Yogyakarta stands near Mount Merapi, which has been under watch for a volcanic eruption
  • A majority of those who died suffered head injuries
  • The quake’s epicentre was offshore, but there was no tsunami

 Also see

Killer quakes of the past 100 years

Pacific `Ring of fire' unleashes another disaster

Terrified residents flee homes after quake

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