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
