A 5.6-magnitude earthquake slammed Indonesia’s West Java region on Monday, killing 46 people, according to the national disaster agency, as rescue personnel and officials raced to assess the full extent of the devastation.
The quake struck land in Cianjur town, some 75 kilometers southeast of Jakarta, at a depth of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles), according to the meteorology and geophysics agency (BMKG), adding that there was no risk of a tsunami.
The head of the disaster agency (BNPB), told a news conference, 46 people had been killed and up to 700 injured.
Herman Suherman, a government official in Cianjur, told the media that some residents were trapped in the rubble of collapsed buildings. News channel Metro TV showed what appeared to be hundreds of victims being treated in a hospital parking lot.
Several homes and an Islamic boarding school were damaged, while electricity in the area was down, disrupting communications, the disaster agency said.
Metro TV footage showed some buildings in Cianjur almost fully destroyed, with residents huddled outside.
Muchlis, who was in Cianjur at the time of the quake, claimed he felt “a massive shake,” and his office’s walls and ceiling were damaged.
“I was very shocked. I worried there would be another quake,” Muchlis told Metro TV, adding that people ran out of their houses in panic.
The BMKG reported 25 aftershocks in the two hours following the quake, and warned of the risk of landslides in the event of heavy rain.
According to Reuters witnesses, the tremor was felt in Jakarta, rocking buildings and rattling furniture, and several individuals evacuated their offices in the central business area.
Indonesia lies in the Pacific Ring of Fire, a seismically active zone where different plates of the earth’s crust collide, resulting in earthquakes and volcanoes.
In 2004, a 9.1 magnitude quake off Sumatra island in northern Indonesia triggered a tsunami that struck 14 countries, killing 226,000 people along the Indian Ocean coastline, more than half of them in Indonesia.
Reuters