A 5.6-magnitude earthquake killed more than 160 people and injured hundreds in Indonesia’s West Java province on Monday, according to local authorities, while rescuers were trying to reach them. survivors trapped under the rubble amid a series of aftershocks.
The epicenter was near the town of Cianjur in West Java, about 75km southeast of the capital Jakarta, where several buildings shook and some offices were evacuated.
Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency (BNPB) spokesman Abdul Muhari said the search would continue throughout the night.
West Java Governor Ridwan Kamil told reporters: “A lot of buildings are dilapidated and shattered.
“There are residents trapped in isolated places…so we expect the number of injuries and deaths to increase over time.”
Indonesia lies on the so-called “Pacific Ring of Fire”, an area that is regularly seismically active and where different plates on the Earth’s crust meet and generate a large number of earthquakes and volcanoes. .
The BNPB said more than 2,200 homes were damaged and more than 5,300 people had to be evacuated.
Herman Suherman, head of the Cianjur government, said electricity was cut and this disrupted communication efforts, adding that a landslide was hampering evacuations in one area.
Hundreds of victims are being treated in the hospital parking lot, some in emergency tents. Elsewhere in Cianjur, residents huddled together on carpets in open fields or in tents while buildings around them were reduced to near ruins.
The Bureau of Weather and Geophysics (BMKG) said officials were still working to determine the full extent of damage as the quake struck at a relatively shallow depth of 10 kilometers.
A woman named Vani, being treated at the main Cianjur hospital, told MetroTV that the walls of her home had collapsed in an aftershock.
“The walls and the wardrobe just fell down… Everything was leveled; I don’t even know where my parents are,” she said.
Within two hours, 25 aftershocks were recorded, the BMKG said, adding that there were fears of more landslides in the event of heavy rain.
In Jakarta, some people evacuated from offices in the central business district, while others said buildings shook and furniture moved, Reuters reported.
In 2004, a magnitude 9.1 earthquake off the northern Indonesian island of Sumatra triggered a tsunami that hit 14 countries, killing 226,000 people along the coast of the Indian Ocean, more than half of the time. that number is in Indonesia.
