A shallow 5.6-magnitude earthquake killed at least 46 people and injured hundreds when it damaged structures and touched off landslides on Indonesia’s main islet of Java on Monday, officers said.
The autumn earthquake was centered in the Cianjur region of West Java, according to the United States Geological Survey, and was felt as far down as the capital Jakarta, where panicked residers ran into the thoroughfares.
“The rearmost data, 46 people were killed. Victims kept coming from numerous areas. Around 700 people were injured,” Herman Suherman, head of Cianjur’s original administration, told broadcaster Kompas TV.
The maturity of deaths was counted in one sanitarium, he said before, with the utmost of the victims killed in the remains of collapsed structures.
He said the city’s Sayang sanitarium had no power after the earthquake, leaving croakers unfit to operate on victims.
Locals rushed victims to the sanitarium on volley exchanges and motorbikes, according to footage attained by AFP.
They were placed in front of the installation as residents spread a tarpaulin on the road for the bodies.
Suherman said electricity was still down and authorities also demanded further health workers due to the inviting number of cases.
Thousands of houses could have been damaged in the earthquake, Adam, a prophet for the administration who, like numerous Indonesians, goes by one name, told AFP.
Shops, a sanitarium, and an Islamic boarding academy in the city were oppressively damaged, according to Indonesian media.
Broadcasters showed several structures in Cianjur with their roofs collapsed and debris lining the thoroughfares.
Cousins of victims congregated at the sanitarium. Suherman advised the death risk could rise because townies outside the city may still be trapped.
“We’re presently handling people who are in an exigency state in this sanitarium. The ambulances keep on coming from the townlets to the sanitarium,” he said.
“There are numerous families in townlets that haven’t been vacated.”
Indonesia’s disaster chief Suharyanto, who also goes by one name, said at least 14 people had failed in the Cianjur area but said information was “still developing”.
Cianjur police chief Doni Hermawan told Metro TV that authorities had saved a woman and a baby from a landslide but a third person they set up had failed of their injuries.
Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari extended his condolences and supplicated for the earthquake’s victims and their families.
Tragic news of the earthquake and resultant loss of precious lives in Indonesia. Our heartfelt condolences and prayers for our Indonesian brothers and sisters, especially families of the victims.
Jakarta rattled
Indonesia’s meteorological agency advised residents near the earthquake to watch out for further temblors.
“We call on people to stay outside the structures for now as there might be implicit foreshocks,” the head of Indonesia’s meteorological agency, Dwikorita Karnawati, told journalists.
The USGS had before reported the earthquake’s magnitude at 5.4.
There were no reports of casualties or major damage in Jakarta.
Mayadita Waluyo, a 22- time-old counsel, described how panicked workers ran for the exits of their structure in Jakarta as the earthquake struck.
“I was working when the bottom under me was shaking. I could feel the earthquake easily. I tried to do nothing to reuse what it was but it came indeed stronger and lasted for some time,” she said.
“I feel a bit dizzy now and my legs are also a bit confined because I had to walk down from the 14th bottom.”
Hundreds of people were staying outside after the earthquake, including some wearing hard headdresses to cover themselves from falling debris, an AFP journalist there said.
Indonesia gets frequent seismic and stormy exertion due to its position on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, where monumental plates collide.
A 6.2-magnitude earthquake that shook Sulawesi islet in January 2021 killed further than 100 people and left thousands homeless.
Source: AFP
