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High-rises evacuated after quake
06/03/2007 08:17 - (SA)
Jakarta - An earthquake jolted Indonesia's Sumatra Island on Tuesday, causing damage there and prompting evacuations of swaying Singapore high-rise buildings.
The quake, measuring 5.8 on the Richter scale, occurred at 10:49 (03:49 GMT) in west-central Sumatra and damaged houses and office buildings, Jabar, an official from Indonesia's national Meteorology and Geophysics Agency, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
The quake's epicentre was on land, 16km south-west of the Batusangkar regency in West Sumatra province and about 33km underground, said Jabar, who like many Indonesians uses only one name. The West Sumatra province lies about 930km north-west of Jakarta.
The El-Shinta radio station reported the quake caused residents to panic and flee into the streets. Electricity and communication was reportedly cut off because of the quake.
The earthquake was felt in Singapore, 460km away, and some buildings in the central business district, such as Capital Square and Millenia Tower, were evacuated.
Students also were evacuated from Ngee Ann Polytechnic, callers told Channel NewsAsia, but no damage was reported in the city-state.
Indonesia, the world's largest archipelago nation, is prone to earthquakes because of its location on an arc of volcanoes and oceanic trenches encircling the Pacific Basin.
In December 2004, a magnitude-9 earthquake off Sumatra's Aheh province triggered a tsunami that struck countries around the Indian Ocean, killing around 177 000 people in Indonesia's Aceh province alone and leaving a total of 226 000 people dead or missing.
In July, another quake-triggered tsunami killed more than 600 people along the southern coast of Java.
Sapa-dpa
- SAPA
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