Indonesian city hit by tsunami after powerful quake
JAKARTA: A tsunami up to two metres high hit a small city on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi on Friday after a major 7.5 quake struck offshore, collapsing buildings and washing a vessel ashore, but officials could provide no information on casualties.
The quake hit as dusk fell and communications were down and the airport closed, making it impossible to assess the damage to life and property, officials said.
National Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said communications had been cut both in the city of Palu, a sleepy but growing tourist resort, and the nearby fishing town of Donggala, closest to the epicentre of the quake 80 km away.
Officials hope to be able to gauge the scale of the damage at daybreak after the strongest of a series of earthquakes that continued late into the evening.
More than 600,000 people live in Palu and Donggala.
“The 1.5- to two-metre tsunami has receded,” Dwikorita Karnawati, who heads Indonesia’s meteorology and geophysics agency, BMKG, told Reuters. “It ended. The situation is chaotic, people are running on the streets and buildings collapsed. There is a ship washed ashore.” BMKG had earlier issued a tsunami warning, but lifted it within the hour.
Amateur footage shown by local TV stations, which could not immediately be authenticated by Reuters, showed waters crashing into houses along Palu’s shoreline.
The national search and rescue agency will deploy a large ship and helicopters to aid with the operation, said agency chief Muhammad Syaugi, adding that he had not been able to contact his team in Palu.
Palu, hit by a 6.2 magnitude quake in 2005 which killed one person, is a tourist resort at the end of a narrow bay famous for its beaches and water sports.
In 2004, an earthquake off the northern Indonesian island of Sumatra triggered a tsunami across the Indian Ocean, killing 226,000 people in 13 countries, including more than 120,000 in Indonesia.
Some people took to Twitter saying they could not contact loved ones. “My family in Palu is unreachable,” Twitter user @noyvionella said. Palu airport was closed. The area was hit by a lighter quake earlier in the day, which destroyed some houses, killing one person and injuring at least 10 in Donggala, authorities said.
The US Geological Survey put the magnitude of the second quake at a strong 7.5, after first saying it was 7.7.
“The (second) quake was felt very strongly, we expect more damage and more victims,” Nugroho said.
The Southeast Asian archipelago nation lies on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, where tectonic plates collide and many of the world’s volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur.
This summer, a series of powerful quakes hit Lombok, killing over 550 people on the holiday island and neighbouring Sumbawa.
Some 1,500 people were injured and about 400,000 residents were displaced after their homes were destroyed.
Indonesia has been hit by a string of other deadly quakes including a devastating 9.1 magnitude tremor that struck off the coast of Sumatra in 2004.
That quake triggered a tsunami that killed 220,000 throughout the region, including 168,000 in Indonesia.
The Boxing Day disaster was the world’s third biggest quake since 1900, and lifted the ocean floor in some places by 15 metres.
Indonesia’s Aceh province was the hardest hit area, but the tsunami affected coastal areas as far away as Africa.
Among the country’s other big earthquakes, a 6.3-magnitude quake in 2006 rocked a densely populated region of Java near the city of Yogyakarta, killing around 6,000 people and injuring 38,000.
More than 420,000 people were left homeless and some 157,000 houses were destroyed.
A year earlier, in 2005, a quake measuring 8.7 magnitude struck off the coast of Sumatra, which is particularly prone to quakes, killing 900 people and injuring 6,000.
It caused widespread destruction on the western island of Nias.
The quake hit as dusk fell and communications were down and the airport closed, making it impossible to assess the damage to life and property