After yet another huge earthquake and a tsunami scare overnight, some residents of India’s battered Andaman and Nicobar islands say they have had enough and are planning to move.
”Every major quake makes me worried, and my ageing parents are thinking about migrating to Chennai,” on the Indian mainland, said student Prem Kumar. ”They can’t take it any more.”
His parents are not the only ones — some among the hundreds of mainlanders who have arrived on the island in the past few years to work in the service and tourist industries have been packing to leave again, officials said.
It was late on Sunday on the remote Andaman and Nicobar islands when an earthquake, which the United States Geological Survey said measured seven on the Richter scale, shattered the tranquillity of residents.
”As soon as the quake was felt, all the people of our locality came out and gathered in an open place. Everyone was worried and questioning why it was happening again,” said Prasenjit Banerjee, a government employee in Port Blair.
The Andaman and Nicobar archipelago was badly battered by the December 26 tsunami that devastated coastlines across Asia and killed 217 000 people, about 5 500 in the Andamans alone.
Since then, the islands have suffered more than 100 aftershocks of varying intensities, plus a number of tsunami alerts that turned out to be false alarms.
Sunday’s night’s jolt produced no giant waves but left residents in a state of panic, according to Andaman and Nicobar islands Governor Ram Kapse.
”The earthquake was felt in the 572 islands that form the Andaman and Nicobar chain of islands. It lasted for about three seconds,” said Kapse, adding that the quake caused people to flee their homes in panic.
Officials said telephones started ringing soon after the quake as anxious islanders jammed networks to enquire about the safety of relatives and friends.
”I saw water falling out of my water tank; I preferred to sit down on the ground than run for a safer place. How long will it continue?” asked Susoma Roy, from the Rangat Islands in the Middle Andaman region.
The powerful quake conjured up images of the devastation caused by the December 26 tsunamis, which crashed far inland across the islands, sweeping away houses and buildings.
The latest quake struck the Andamans about 440km north-west of Indonesia’s tsunami-hit city of Banda Aceh at about 3.42GMT on Sunday, the US Geological Survey said.
The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre responded by issuing a bulletin warning about potentially ”destructive” tsunamis within a few hundred kilometres of the epicentre.
The tremor was felt as far away as Thailand’s resort island of Phuket, Indonesia’s Banda Aceh and in Sri Lanka.
The director of Thailand’s National Disaster Warning Centre, Plodprasop Surasawadi, went on national television to issue a tsunami warning for the country’s south-west coast, but the alarm was lifted 90 minutes later.
A similar alert was issued in Indonesia, but the Indian government reassured coastal dwellers there was not reason to panic.
Meanwhile, a Press Trust of India news agency report said two strong aftershocks jolted the Andamans on Monday morning, but no casualties or damage to property was reported.
The fresh quakes measured 5,3 and 5,7 on the Richter scale respectively, the local meteorological office said. — Sapa-AFP