Five killed after tsunami hits Indonesia's Java island
Posted: 17 July 2006 1855 hrs
A meteorologist points to a seismograph
reading
JAKARTA : A tsunami hit the coast of Indonesia's Java island on
Monday, killing at least five people and leaving an unknown
number of others missing as the waves wrecked
buildings and sent boats piling onto land.
It was not immediately clear how high the waves were when they hit
the coastal town of Pangandaran around an hour after a
7.2-magnitude earthquake jolted the seabed south of Java
island, but witnesses said the destruction was
serious.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told reporters the bodies of
five people had already been found and delivered to the morgue, and
he called on residents to evacuate vulnerable areas along the
coast.
"The search is ongoing for those who are still missing," he said,
adding that military and rescue teams had been sent to the site.
"It is important to take care of the dead and the injured."
He said there had been five aftershocks following the quake, which
hit around 3:19 pm (0819 GMT) with the epicentre in the sea off
Pangandaran southeast of Jakarta, according to Indonesia's
seismology centre.
"Waves suddenly came and we ran to the hills. Four people from my
group are still missing," a woman who gave her name as Teti told
ElShinta radio.
"Many small hotels were destroyed," she said. "Boats have
been thrown into hotels." She said saw three bodies.
"Children were crying and many are injured," said
Kartono, another local resident. He said the damage was "very
bad."
The seabed tremor was felt for more than one minute and rattled
workers in tall office buildings in Jakarta and in the West Java
provincial capital Bandung.
"People ran out of their offices in panic," an office worker in
Bandung told Elshinta radio.
Indonesia was the nation hardest hit by the devastating December
2004 Indian Ocean tsunami catastrophe, which killed around 220,000
people across the region - and 168,000 in Indonesia's Aceh province
alone.
Despite a push after that disaster to
establish a tsunami early warning system, there was not one working
in Indonesia when Monday's quake struck, according to an
official at the geophysics agency in Jakarta.
"We still don't have a tsunami early warning system in place," said
the official.
Indonesia sits on the Pacific "Ring of Fire", where the meeting of
continental plates causes high volcanic and seismic activity.
Both the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii and the Japan
Meteorological Agency issued tsunami alerts for parts of Indonesia
and Australia after the quake hit.
A tsunami warning was also issued for India's Nicobar islands, a
top administrator of the territory said.
There were no immediate reports of damage in
Australia, where the alerts had been issued for Christmas
Island and the Cocos Islands.
A spokesman for Geoscience Australia said a 60 centimetre (23-inch)
tidal surge had been recorded at Christmas Island, which he
described as "quite small".
A surge of 10 centimetres was recorded at the Cocos Islands. -
AFP/ch
