Survivors of the Boxing Day tsunami fled their homes on Monday night after a huge undersea earthquake measuring up to 8,7 on the Richter scale struck off the coast of Sumatra, with as many as 2 000 people feared dead on the Indonesian island of Nias, close to its epicentre.
Ninety-three days after giant waves left nearly 300 000 people dead or missing, Indonesian Vice-President Jusuf Kalla told a local radio station that between 1 000 and 2 000 people were probably killed on Nias after the earthquake.
He said the estimate was based on an assessment of damage to buildings, not bodies counted.
Agus Mendrofa, deputy district head on Nias, off the western coast of Sumatra, earlier told local radio 296 people had died. He added that hundreds of buildings had been damaged or had collapsed.
Sergeant Zulkifli Sirait, of the island’s police, said: ”We still cannot count the number of casualties or the number of collapsed buildings because it is dark here. It is possible that hundreds of people trapped in the collapsed buildings died.”
The Misna missionary news agency in Rome reported that a huge fire was raging in Gu Nungsitoli, the island’s main town.
”From the window I see very high flames,” it quoted Father Raymond Laia as saying by telephone. ”The town is completely destroyed.”
The town is likely to be 75% damaged, local police said, after the earthquake struck on the same fault line as the Boxing Day quake, 400km south-east of Banda Aceh. Altogether, at least 340 Nias residents died and 10 000 were left homeless in the December 26 earthquake.
With a tsunami warning system for the Indian Ocean still the subject of political debate, governments in Thailand, India and Japan tried to warn residents through radio and television after the earthquake struck 30km under the Andaman Sea at 11.09pm local time.
On Monday night, the threat of a tsunami appeared to recede, with the Thai, Sri Lankan and Indian governments cancelling their tsunami alerts. But in Australia, officials warned a tsunami could hit the western coast.
In the Indonesian province of Aceh, tens of thousands of people abandoned tents and temporary homes and ran for high ground in darkness when the earth shook for two minutes, far longer than the much smaller quakes in recent weeks.
Electricity and phone lines were down across much of Sumatra as the earthquake was felt as far away as Bangkok and Singapore, where tall buildings swayed and people in high-rise hotels streamed on to the streets.
Tsunami potential
Recorded at 8,7 by the United States Geological Survey and 8,5 by Japan’s Meteorological Agency, with an epicentre further south than the Boxing Day earthquake, seismologists warned the latest earthquake had the potential to create another destructive tsunami at the end of a week of at least seven smaller aftershocks in the region.
Residents in the Sumatran city of Medan said they felt the tremors were stronger than on December 26.
In Thailand, cracks in buildings appeared, apparently caused by the quake, and people were evacuated from hotels and hospitals in Phuket, Phang-Nga and Krabi.
Warnings were issued over the radio by officials charged with setting up a tsunami warning system in the country.
”About 3 000 to 4 000 tourists and locals have been evacuated from Patong and Kamala beaches to higher places,” Wichai Buapradit, deputy governor of Phuket, told Reuters. ”We’ve told them to take their valuable belongings and to go to higher places.”
Sirens sounded in Sri Lanka as towns on the east coast began frantically evacuating residents. Local media reported people had fled inland well in advance of any official government warnings.
Scientists last week predicted a magnitude 7,5 earthquake was possible in the region after the seismic slip on December 26 had piled dangerous levels of stress on to two vulnerable parts of the fault zone off the coast of Sumatra.
”There’s been seismic activity throughout this zone that has been ongoing for the last three months,” Dale Grant of the US Geological Survey told the BBC. ”This is an aftershock of the great quake, which is something we see as the earth tries to settle itself.”
But Grant said he would not expect potential tsunami wave heights to be ”anywhere near as large” as those that pounded coastlines on Boxing Day because the quake was less strong. The December 26 event measured nine on the Richter scale and left 1,5-million homeless across 11 countries.
Large aftershock
The British Geological Survey said Monday’s earthquake ”occurred close to the epicentre of the Boxing Day quake”.
”It could be described as the largest aftershock of this event,” said senior seismologist David Booth. He said there was a high probability of a tsunami occurring ”but because the earthquake is of such a shallow depth and is offshore, it would be on a much smaller scale than the Boxing Day disaster”.
India issued a tsunami warning as a precaution and put troops on alert along its coastline, but said it had no evidence or reports of any deadly waves.
In the Indian-controlled Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which have been rocked by 100 aftershocks since the December tsunami, local authorities issued a tsunami warning asking local people to vacate the coast. Scientists at Hyderabad’s National Geophysical Research Institute interviewed on Indian television warned that if a tsunami were to be generated, there was a three-hour window before the coast would be hit.
On Sunday, a quake measuring 6,4 came 40 minutes after midnight local time in Indonesia’s eastern province of Maluku. A second aftershock, measuring six, came seven hours later. On Friday, a 5,9 quake hit near Banda Aceh.
Despite panic and evacuations, there was also complacency on the streets of the devastated areas that have become weary of aftershocks. With no sign of a tsunami two hours after the tremors, many Indonesians roused from sleep returned to their beds. — Guardian Unlimited Â