Eight people died after a strong earthquake yesterday morning rocked Indonesia’s remote Maluku Islands, destroying homes and triggering landslides that buried at least one of the victims.
Terrified residents ran into the streets as buildings fell around them during the magnitude 6.5 tremor.
Among the six people killed directly by the earthquake, one person was buried in a landslide while others were hit by falling debris, the local disaster agency said.
Photo: Reuters / Antara Foto / Izaak Mulyawan
Another person died of a heart attack as the tremor hit, while one woman died after falling off her motorbike while fleeing to higher ground, officials said.
Residents of Ambon, a city of about 400,000 people, were seen helping injured residents in blood-stained clothes, while images showed wrecked homes with collapsed walls and rubble strewn on the ground.
Some patients fled a local hospital as the earthquake hit, prompting officials to set up makeshift shelters outside the building, an official said.
“The impact was felt across Ambon city and surrounding areas,” said Rahmat Triyono, head of the earthquake and tsunami division at the Indonesian Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysical Agency (BMKG). “Many people were woken up by the shaking... It felt like a truck was passing by.”
The US Geological Survey said the earthquake struck about 37km northeast of Ambon in Maluku Province at a depth of 29km.
The area was hit by at least two dozen aftershocks, including one that measured magnitude 5.6, Triyono said.
A journalist in Ambon described scenes of panic as people fled their houses when the earthquake struck.
Architect Suryanto Soekarno said that a construction site where he and his employees were working was rocked by the tremor.
“It was a really hard shock,” he told reporters. “Filing cabinets fell over and my employees ran away to save themselves. Some were injured, but thank God only with minor wounds.”
Initial reports said that the earthquake struck offshore, but later analysis found that it hit onshore, raising the potential for damage, the Indonesian National Board for Disaster Management said.
Local BMKG head Oral Sem Wilar called for calm.
“People were panicking and started to evacuate in some places, but we are trying to tell them there’s no need to panic, because there’s no tsunami threat,” he told reporters.
The Southeast Asian archipelago is one of the most disaster-prone nations on Earth. It experiences frequent seismic and volcanic activity due to its position on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” where tectonic plates collide.
Last month, five people died and several were injured after a powerful undersea earthquake rocked heavily populated Java island.
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