JAKARTA, Indonesia: Two natural disasters caused massive devastation in different parts of the world in the last 36 hours.
A massive earthquake wreaked havoc on the Indonesian island of Sumatra Wednesday, with officials saying it could have killed more than 1,000 people as homes and buildings collapsed.
Priyadi Kardono, spokesman for the national disaster agency, said that about 500 houses had collapsed burying people.
The calamity was preceded by towering tsunamis churned up by a huge temblor that slammed into the Samoan islands in the South Pacific late on Tuesday, killing at least 113 people. The huge waves wiped out entire villages and flattened tourist resorts.
In quake-hit Sumatra the death toll was likely to rise as many buildings in the city of 900,000 people had collapsed, Vice President Jusuf Kalla told a late night news conference in Jakarta.
“We have received a report from the mayor of Padang that the death toll is 75. But many others are trapped in collapsed shops, building and hotels. It is difficult to know because it is dark now,” Kalla said.
TV footage showed devastation, with piles of rubble and smashed houses after the 7.6 magnitude earthquake, which caused widespread panic across the city.Rustam Pakaya, the head of the Health Ministry’s disaster center in Jakarta, said “thousands of people are trapped in the rubble of buildings.”
The main hospital had collapsed, roads were cut by landslides and Metro Television said the roof of Padang airport had caved in. Thousands were expected to spend the night in the open while a full assessment of the damage would need to wait until daybreak. The disaster is the latest in a spate of natural and man-made calamities to hit Indonesia, a sprawling archipelago of 226 million people.
The quake was felt around the region, with some high-rise buildings in Singapore, 440 km to the northeast, evacuating staff. Office buildings also shook in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur.
Padang, capital of West Sumatra province, sits on one of the world’s most active fault lines along the “Ring of Fire” where the Indo-Australia plate grinds against the Eurasia plate to create regular tremors and sometimes quakes.
Devastation in Pacific
Meanwhile, monster waves that witnesses and officials said measured between three and 7.5 meters high pounded the remote Pacific islands of Samoa and Western Samoa after an 8.0-magnitude undersea quake struck late Tuesday.
While the quake toppled buildings and sent thousands fleeing to high ground as the tsunami approached, many others were hit by the walls of water that swept people and cars out to sea and obliterated coastal settlements.
US President Barack Obama called the incident in the outlying US territory of American Samoa a “major disaster” and vowed “aggressive” action to help survivors. “I am closely monitoring these tragic events, and have declared a major disaster for American Samoa, which will provide the tools necessary for a swift and aggressive response,” he said.
The first US relief flight to the Pacific islands touched down late Wednesday. US officials said they expect to provide relief materials for weeks by sea as well as more urgent materials by air.
Samoa’s Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi said he was “shocked beyond belief.” “So much has gone. So many people are gone,” he told the Australian news agency AAP. “I’m so shocked, so saddened by all the loss.”
The tsunami swept across the Pacific, battering Samoa where hospital workers said it killed at least 84 people, American Samoa where it felled 22, and Tonga, where at least seven people died.
As Australia, New Zealand and the United States led with immediate pledges of assistance, scores more people were missing feared dead in the chaos and despair that the twin disaster left in its wake.
“We are getting reports of missing people in areas where damage is extensive on the south and southeast coasts,” local journalist Jona Tuiletufuga said. “Entire villages have been wiped out.”
