5 dead, 7 hurt in Indonesia quake
Banda Aceh ( Indonesia), April 12: Five people died and at least seven were injured as massive earthquakes struck off Indonesia’s Sumatra island, officials said on Thursday.
Officials said they believed at least two people died of heart attacks and three others died of shock in the quakes on Wednesday.
“Based on data collected on victims and damage, five people died, one person is critically injured and six others had minor injuries,” National Mitigation Agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said.
In the tense hours that an Indian Ocean- wide tsunami watch remained in effect Wednesday, Indonesian meteorologists were monitoring offshore buoys that measured the waves, confidently predicting that the likelihood of a large tsunami was minimal.
The use of smartphones and social media has risen to the fore across Asia since 2004, which helped to spread the word on Wednesday across other affected nations such as Thailand and India.
“The early warning system is working well,” Indonesian President Susilo Bambang reassured the nation in a televised address on Wednesday. “So far, there is no tsunami threat.”
At a magnitude of 8.6, the first of the two quakes which hit Wednesday was the 10th strongest recorded in the past hundred years — all the others produced deadly tsunamis.
Indonesia launched a $ 130- million tsunami warning system in November 2008 in a bid to prevent a repeat of tragedies like the 2004 disaster, which killed around 170,000 people in the archipelago nation alone.
On Thursday, life in Indonesia’s Aceh province, which was nearly flattened in 2004, was returning to normal, with traffic in the streets and no visible signs of damage in the capital.
Shops in Banda Aceh were open, most people were back at work and farmers were in their fields. Electricity was also back on, though schools were empty as parents