People rushing away from coast
2005-03-28 20:48
Madras, India - A tsunami warning was issued on Monday in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu following a powerful earthquake off the Indonesian coast, a state government official said.
"We have just received an alert from the centre (federal government) and have asked the fishermen down the coast to move towards the interior," CV Shanker, officer on special duty for tsunami relief, told reporters.
An Indian navy spokesperson in Port Blair, capital of the remote Andaman and Nicobar islands in the Bay of Bengal, told AFP that a "full alert" had been issued but there "was no sign of a tsunami as yet".
"We don't see any abnormalities in the sea so far and we checked with Campbell Bay (southernmost point of India) which felt the tremor but there is no sign of tsunami as of yet," the spokesperson said on condition of anonymity.
A Red Cross official in Nagapattinam city of Tamil Nadu, which was worst hit by the December 26 tsunami disaster, said people were running away from the coast.
'They are so scared'
"All the people living near the sea shore are running away after they saw what appeared on television (the warnings). There has been no government warning on the new tsunamis. But they are scared," K Illakuvan told AFP.
"They are so scared. They have taken whatever (of their) little belongings in their make-shift shelters and are running far away from the sea," he said.
From Colombo in Sri Lanka came more reports of the tsunami warning, urging residents in coastal areas to evacuate immediately.
The meteorological department there said they were asking residents along the island's coastlines that were battered in the december 26 tsunami to leave immediately following the latest quake measuring 8.2 on the Richter scale.
Must leave as a precaution
"We are not certain that this latest quake will trigger tsunamis that will hit Sri Lanka," department deputy director Lalith Chandrapala told AFP. "But, we are asking people living along the coast to leave as a precaution."
From Bangkok it was reported that coastal residents in southern Thailand were urged to evacuate as authorities issued a tsunami warning after a powerful quake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
"The earthquake is strong enough to issue the warning for people to evacuate as a prevention, particularly in the area affected by the tsunami last time," Chalermchai Akekantrong, deputy director general of the meteorological department, told Thai television.
People at the famous Patong beach on the tourist island of Phuket were already headed toward higher ground, TV reports said.
- AFP