A magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck yesterday off eastern Indonesia, killing one person, damaging buildings and sending people running into the streets in panic.
The early-morning tremor in the Molucca Sea between the Sulawesi and Maluku island groups triggered waves up to 75cm high and prompted a tsunami warning that was subsequently lifted.
“I didn’t know what to do. I was just trying to save my family,” street food vendor Siti Rohayati, 58, told reporters of the moment the quake hit during the breakfast rush in Manado in North Sulawesi Province. “All that mattered was getting my children away safely. I pushed all three of them and told them: ‘Run.’”
Photo: Reuters
One person was killed when a building collapsed in Manado, said George Leo Mercy Randang, the region’s search and rescue chief.
The person was “buried under the rubble,” he said.
Agency spokesman Nuriadin Gumeleng later said that three people in Manado sustained light injuries.
The US Geological Survey (USGS) said the tremor hit at a shallow depth of 35km.
The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center initially said that hazardous tsunami were possible within 1,000km of the epicenter along the coasts of Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia.
Elevated waves were observed in nine locations in North Maluku, North Sulawesi and Gorontalo provinces, with the highest hitting 75cm in North Minahasa, Indonesia’s BMKG geological agency said.
The Pacific center lifted its warning just over two hours after the tremor, saying the tsunami threat “has now passed.”
Budi Nurgianto, a 42-year-old resident of Ternate in North Maluku province, said he was inside his house when the tremor struck, sending people outside in terror.
“The quake was felt strongly. I heard it first from the walls of the house that shook,” he said. “When I went outside, there were many people outside. They were panicked. The quake was felt [for] quite long, more than a minute. I even saw some people leaving their house without having finished their shower.”
Dozens of aftershocks rippled through the area after the main quake, Teuku Faisal Fathani, the head of the Indonesian geological agency, told reporters in the capital, Jakarta.
One of them was magnitude 5.9, USGS data showed.
A reporter in Manado, about 300km west of Ternate by sea, said the shaking woke him and others in the city of about 450,000 people.
“I immediately woke up and left my house. People [were] immediately scrambling outside. There is a school and the pupils rushed outside,” he said.
The shaking persisted for “quite long,” but he did not see “significant damage,” he added.
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