Tulsa World: Quake traps thousands in ruins

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Quake traps thousands in ruins
Officials say at least two hospitals collapsed.

Earthquake survivors receive medical treatment at a hospital in Padang Panjang, West Sumatra, on Wednesday. The powerful earthquake rocked western Indonesia on Wednesday. TUNDRA LAKSAMANA / Associated Press

By ANTHONY DEUTSCH Associated Press
Published: 10/1/2009 2:32 AM
Last Modified: 10/1/2009 6:04 AM

JAKARTA, Indonesia — A powerful earthquake struck western Indonesia on Wednesday, triggering landslides and trapping thousands under collapsed buildings — including two hospitals, an official said. At least 200 bodies were found in one coastal city, but the toll was expected to be far higher.

The temblor started fires, severed roads and cut off power and communications to Padang, a coastal city of 900,000 on Sumatra island. Thousands fled in panic, fearing a tsunami.

Buildings swayed hundreds of miles away in neighboring Malaysia and Singapore.

In the sprawling low-lying city of Padang, the shaking was so intense that people crouched or sat on the street to avoid falling. Children screamed as an exodus of thousands tried to get away from the coast.

The magnitude 7.6 quake hit at 5:15 a.m. CDT, just off the coast of Padang, the U.S. Geological Survey reported. It occurred a day after a killer tsunami hit islands in the South Pacific and was along the same fault line that spawned the 2004 Asian tsunami that killed 230,000 people in 11 nations.

A tsunami warning was issued Wednesday for countries along the Indian Ocean, but was lifted after about an hour; there were no reports of giant waves.

The temblor flattened buildings and felled trees in Padang, damaged mosques and hotels and crushed cars. In the gathering darkness shortly after the quake, residents fought some fires with buckets of water and used their bare hands to search for survivors, pulling at the wreckage and tossing it away piece by piece.

"People ran to high ground. Houses and buildings were badly damaged," said Kasmiati, who lives on the coast near the quake's epicenter.

"I was outside, so I am safe, but my children at home were injured," she said before her cell phone went dead. Like many Indonesians, she uses one name.

The loss of telephone service deepened the worries of those outside the stricken area.

Initial reports received by the government said 75 people were killed, but the real number is "definitely higher," Vice President Jusuf Kalla told reporters in the capital, Jakarta. "It's hard to tell because there is heavy rain and a blackout," he said.

Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari told MetroTV that two hospitals and a mall collapsed in Padang.

"This is a high-scale disaster, more powerful than the earthquake in Yogyakarta in 2006 when more than 3,000 people died," Supari said, referring to a major city on the main Indonesian island of Java.

Indonesia's government announced $10 million in emergency response aid and medical teams and military planes were being dispatched to set up field hospitals and distribute tents, medicine and food rations. Members of the Cabinet were preparing for the possibility of thousands of deaths.

Rustam Pakaya of the Health Ministry's crisis center, said "thousands of people are trapped under the collapsed houses."

"Many buildings are badly damaged, including hotels and mosques," said Wandono, an official at the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency in Jakarta, citing reports from residents.

Indonesia, a vast archipelago with more than 17,000 islands and a population of 235 million, straddles continental plates and is prone to seismic activity along what is known as the Pacific Ring of Fire.

Experts said the Indonesian quake was not related to Tuesday's earthquake that spawned a tsunami in the South Pacific islands of Samoa and American Samoa. By ANTHONY DEUTSCH Associated Press

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