CIANJUR: A powerful earthquake killed more than 160 people in Indonesia’s West Java province on Monday, with rescue workers searching for survivors trapped under rubble amid several aftershocks.
The 5.6-magnitude earthquake was centered about 75 km (45 mi) southeast of the capital Jakarta near the city of Sianjur in mountainous West Java. The region is home to over 2.5 million people.
West Java Governor Rizwan Kamil said on Instagram that 162 people were killed and 326 injured.
Indonesia’s Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) still put the death toll at 62 and rescuers were searching for 25 people buried under the rubble, and a spokesman said the search would continue overnight.
Rizwan told reporters that the death toll may rise due to the collapse of several buildings.
“There are residents stranded in isolated places … so we’re anticipating that the number of injuries and fatalities will increase over time.”
Indonesia straddles the so-called “Pacific Ring of Fire”, a highly seismic zone, where different plates on the Earth’s crust collide and produce a large number of earthquakes and volcanoes.
BNPB said more than 2,200 houses were damaged and more than 5,300 people were displaced. Rizwan put the number at 13,000 and said they would be dispersed to various evacuation centers in Sianjur.
Power was out, communications were disrupted, officials said, while landslides were preventing evacuations in some areas.
Hundreds of victims were being treated in the hospital parking lot, some under emergency tents. Elsewhere in Cianjur, residents huddled together on mats in open fields or in tents while buildings around them were reduced to rubble.
By late night, ambulances were arriving at the hospital, bringing more people to the hospital.
According to the Meteorological and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), authorities were still working to determine the full extent of the damage caused by the earthquake, which struck at a relatively shallow depth of 10 km.
Wani, who was undergoing treatment at the Central Hospital in Sianjur, told Metro TV that the walls of her house collapsed during the aftershock.
“Walls and cupboards fell down…everything flattened, I don’t even know my mother and father,” he said.
Rizwan said 88 aftershocks were recorded while meteorological agency BMKG warned of more landslides in case of heavy rain.
Coco, 48, was looking for one of her seven children.
“The children were downstairs and I was upstairs washing clothes. Everything fell under me… one of my children is still missing,” she said.
In Jakarta, some people left offices in the central business district, while others reported shaking buildings and moving furniture, Reuters witnesses said.
In 2004, a magnitude 9.1 earthquake on the island of Sumatra in northern Indonesia triggered a tsunami that swept through 14 countries, killing 226,000 people along the Indian Ocean coast, more than half of them in Indonesia. were
