After 7.2 M Earthquake..
The 7.7-magnitude temor struck near the Mentawai island chain, one of the world’s top surfing destinations, about 250 kilometres off the coast of Sumatra.
Eyewitness says, “We have people reporting to the security post here that they could not hold on to their children, that they were swept away. A lot of people are crying”, local legislator Hendri Dori Satoko said on TV.
The epicenter of the quake was located at 78 kilometres southwest Pagai Selatan Mentawai and at a depth of 10 kilometres under sea bedSmall tsunamis occurred five minutes after the 7.7 magnitude quake struck at 9:42 p.m. local time yesterday.
Local media reported on Tuesday that the search and rescue team is focusing on searching the missing people. However, high tides have hindered the rescue work, preventing the rescuers from reaching the stricken area.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has declared an emergency response.
Indonesia's most volatile volcano is also erupting, spewing plumes of hot ash and hurling rocks into the air. Officials said, the valcano - Merapi, in central Java, began erupting just before dusk today.
Scientists have warned the pressure building up beneath its lava dome could lead to one of the most powerful blasts in years.
Thousands of residents living on the volcano's slopes have been evacuated. Television footage showed thousands of people fleeing the area, some covered in white ash.
Other sources indicate similar reports...
The government’s disaster management body said 113 bodies had been recovered, while as many as 500 others were unaccounted for, including a group of nine Australian surfers who had been out on a boat tour.
Emergency response teams were reportedly hampered by rough seas and strong winds. The journey to the Mentawai islands, where dozens of aftershocks caused panic among residents, can take 12 hours by boat. There are no commercial flights.
About 10 islands were struck by tidal waves as high as 3 metres, while the shaking toppled buildings and homes, killing many more, local television stations said.
Most buildings in the coastal village of Betu Monga were destroyed, Hardimansyah, an official with the regional branch of the fisheries department, was quoted by the Reuters news agency as saying.
“Of the 200 people living in that village, only 40 have been found and 160 are still missing, mostly women and children”, he said.
Hardimansyah said 80 per cent of the houses in the area were damaged and food supplies were low.
The earthquake’s epicentre was along the same fault line that spawned the massive 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed more than 130,000 people in Indonesia’s Aceh region.
Quakes of similar magnitude just over a year ago killed more than 1,100 people on the close by Sumatran mainland, most in the provincial capital, Padang.
This earthquake was relatively shallow at a depth of about 20km, making it more likely to cause damage.
Indonesia straddles several fault lines, making it one of the most seismically active regions in the world.
Several hundred kilometres to the east of the earthquake zone, the Mount Merapi volcano roared back to life, killing three people and burning 13, the Detik.com website said. Thousands of villagers and farmers have been evacuated from the mountain’s fertile slopes in central Java, but many refuse to leave because they fear looting.
Eruptions on Tuesday sent ash and lava spewing on to the hillside below. The volcano’s deadly pyroclastic flows, clouds of poison gas and hot rock moving as fast as 700km an hour, killed dozens in 1994 and 2006.
