Indonesia reels after deadly earthquake
At least 162 people were killed when a 5.6 magnitude earthquake struck Indonesia’s main island of Java, causing office workers and residents of the capital, Jakarta, to flee into the streets.
The bulk of the fatalities were in the epicentre of Cianjur, about 100km west of Jakarta, where multiple buildings collapsed in the quake that the United States geological survey said occurred at a depth of about 10km.
Several landslides were reported in the area and an Islamic boarding school, a hospital and other public facilities were reportedly damaged.
The governor of West Java, the worst-hit province, said: “I regret to inform that 162 are dead”.
Herman Suherman, the head of administration in Cianjur town, told Kompas TV that at least 700 people were injured, with many suffering bone fractures and head injuries from flying debris.
“Victims kept coming from many areas,” he said, and the authorities have warned that the death toll may still rise as many villages have yet to be evacuated.
Chaotic scenes have been reported at medical facilities and patients in the main hospital in Cianjur had to be evacuated out of fear that the building could collapse.
Videos on social media showed office buildings in Jakarta shaking as employees escaped down stairwells to run into open streets.
“I was working when the floor under me was shaking. I could feel the tremor clearly. I tried to do nothing to process what it was, but it became even stronger and lasted for some time,” lawyer Mayadita Waluyo told the AFP news agency.
An office worker named Ahmad Ridwan told Reuters: “We are used to this [earthquakes] in Jakarta, but people were so nervous just now, so we also panicked.”
The Southeast Asian nation of more than 270 million people is frequently hit by deadly earthquakes,
volcanic eruptions and tsunamis because of its location on the so-called “Ring of Fire”, which is the name given to an arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific Basin.
In 2018, more than 2000 people were killed in Sulawesi province when a powerful earthquake also triggered a tsunami and liquefaction of the earth, swallowing entire neighbourhoods. A powerful Indian Ocean quake and tsunami in 2004 killed nearly 230,000 people in a dozen countries, most of them in Indonesia.
— Telegraph Group Ltd