THERE are no Filipino casualties in a powerful shallow natural disaster that struck the western coast of Indonesia on Wednesday night, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said on Thursday.
Advertisement
USGS originally put the magnitude at 8.2.
Officials said the procedure is to issue a tsunami warning if a quake of more than 6.5 magnitude and with its epicentre less than 20 km (12 miles) deep happens at sea, and that went smoothly on Wednesday.
“There’s no report on death toll based on the information from our monitoring team”, West Sumatra Deputy Governor Nasrul Abit told reporters in the province’s capital city of Padang.
Indonesian and Australian authorities called off their tsunami alerts within two hours of the 7.8 magnitude tremor, though it was still unclear if the quake had destroyed any buildings or killed people in Sumatra.
The spokesman of the national disaster mitigation agency, Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, said the buoys were inoperable because of vandalism or a lack of funds for operation and maintenance. The tsunami was triggered by waves as high as 57 feet which affected more than a dozen nations.
“I’ve heard there are lots of men and women striving to reach higher ground due to the tsunami reports, so a few of the roads are jammed”.
The local daily notes that when the warning was issued, Padang residents who lived near the coast fled their homes and drove to safer areas aboard their motorcycles and cars.
Tsunami warnings are no longer in place for Christmas Island and Cocos Islands.
Kompas TV said patients at hospitals in Padang were being evacuated. The generated tsunami waves killed 225.000 people.
Advertisement
Like the Philippines, Indonesia is prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions because it is located in the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, a highly seismically active zone where neighboring tectonic plates violently clash.
