Indonesia on tsunami alert after quake

 

Indonesia has issued a tsunami warning after an 8.6 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Sumatra, triggering concern across the Indian Ocean region. The US Geological Survey (USGS) said the quake occurred at 2.38pm local time. The epicentre was 434km south-west of Banda Aceh, the capital of Aceh province, and occurred at a depth of 23km. The survey initially recorded the earthquake as 8.9 magnitude, but later downgraded it to 8.6. More   Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono downplayed the threat of a tsunami. He stressed that no damage had been reported so far. The government dispatched the head of the country’s disaster management agency to Banda Aceh. “[The] early warning system is working well,” Mr Yudhoyono told reporters at a press conference in Jakarta where he was meeting British prime minister David Cameron. Some scientists said the type of earthquake reduced the odds of a tsunami. Bruce Presgrave of the USGS told the BBC that the earth had moved horizontally, not vertically, meaning less water would have been displaced. “We can’t rule out the possibility, but horizontal motion is less likely to produce a destructive tsunami,” Mr Presgrave said. The quake was felt across the Indian Ocean from Indonesia and Vietnam to India. The USGS recorded at least three aftershocks in the region, one of which was magnitude 8.2. The southern Indian city of Chennai closed its port, while Phuket, a Thai island popular with tourists, closed its international airport as residents of the island and other southern Thai areas were ordered to higher ground. In Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s financial centre, some high-rise office buildings were briefly evacuated before people returned to work. Tata Consultancy Services, India’s largest IT outsourcing group by revenues, said it had sent home about 40,000 people working in the eastern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. “As a measure of extreme caution, we have evacuated all our employees from two of our large facilities around Chennai,” TCS said in a statement. Sasidhra Reddy, vice-president of India’s National Disaster Management Authority, told local TV channels that the his agency virtually ruled out the possibility of a tsunami hitting the Indian coast. A milder shock hit India’s major metro areas, including the capital New Delhi and Mumbai, the financial hub, and Bangalore, the nation’s IT centre. The epicentre of the quake was about 200km from that of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that left 170,000 dead or missing in Indonesia, while taking a total of about 230,000 people in 13 Indian Ocean nations. That tsunami was triggered by a 9.1 magnitude earthquake that hit the day after Christmas. In January this year, the same area was hit by a 7.3 magnitude earthquake that prompted a tsunami warning. No damage was reported, and authorities lifted the warning within two hours. Indonesia has been hit by several deadly quakes with a magnitude of greater than 7.0 since the 2004 disaster. The latest quake comes just a year after a 9.0 magnitude earthquake occurred off the northeastern coast of Japan, triggering a huge tsunami that devastated communities along hundreds of kilometres of the country’ north-east coast. The unexpected scale of the tsunami overwhelmed sea walls and other defences along what is one of the world’s most fortified coasts, wiping out large areas of towns and villages, destroying ports and sparking the world’s worst nuclear crisis in 25 years. The disaster left nearly 19,000 people dead or missing, but experts say that many more saved themselves by quickly moving to higher ground or tall buildings after the earthquake, a response that was the result of local memories of past tsunami and regular emergency drills.

Posted in: Indonesia on tsunami alert after quake