Sunday, December 26, 2004

Massive earthquake rocks Southeast Asia, 13 reportedly killed

JAKARTA, Indonesia: At least 13 people died in Thailand and Indonesia when a massive 8.5-magnitude earthquake rocked large parts of Southeast Asia on Sunday, causing buildings to collapse, tidal waves and widespread flooding, witnesses and officials said.

High-rise buildings swayed from Singapore to Bangkok, but most of the damage occurred in the Indonesian province of Aceh, on the northwestern tip of Sumatra island, nearest the epicenter.

Nine people were killed in the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, el-Shinta radio station quoted a witness as saying. It was not possible to immediately confirm the reports.

"I saw nine people killed by flooding, including four children,'' witness Mustafa told el-Shinta radio station from Banda Aceh.

At least four tourists died on a beach in the southern Thai resort island of Phuket, said Sorat Susaeng from the Public Health Ministry.

The ministry earlier reported that several tourists were swept from a Phuket beach by tidal waves surging as high as five meters (16 feet), but it was not clear if the dead tourists were the same people as those who were swept away.

A spokesman for Indonesian state-owned Garuda Airlines said Banda Aceh's airport -- located several kilometers from the sea -- was flooded and planes were unable to land there. The spokesman did not say how deep the water was.

It was not possible to immediately confirm the reports.

Electricity and telephone networks in parts of Banda Aceh were knocked out and dozens of shops and buildings had either collapsed or were damaged, witnesses told el-Shinta.

"The ground was shaking for a long time,'' Yayan Zamzani told the station. "It must be the strongest earthquake in the last 15 years.''

Residents in the Indonesian towns of Lhokseumawe and Banda Aceh reported tidal waves had triggered flooding in coastal regions.

An Associated Press reporter in Lhokseumawe said several houses had been damaged and that water levels on main streets in the town had reached one-meter (three-feet) high. At least one house had been swept away, he said.

Hundreds of people were fleeing to higher ground, he said.

Hospital officials there said 17 people were seriously injured, including one whose leg was severed by falling debris from a house.

"My house is completely under water,'' a Lhokseumawe resident who lived near the coast, Adam Hussein, told el-Shinta. "The waves were so high. Everything inside is ruined.''

Rising water levels in inland rivers were also reported.

Indonesia, a country of 17,000 islands, is prone to seismic upheaval because of its location on the margins of tectonic plates that make up the so-called the "Ring of Fire'' around the Pacific Ocean basin.

The quake was felt in neighboring Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, as many of those countries' Christian communities woke up from their Christmas celebrations.

The U.S. Geological Survey's Web site recorded the magnitude 8.5 earthquake off the west coast of Northern Sumatra, 1,620 kilometers (1,000 miles) northwest of Jakarta. It was centered 40 kilometers (25 miles) below the seabed, the Web site reported. The survey initially reported the quake as 8.1.

Buildings swayed in the Thai capital, Bangkok, some 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) from Sumatra, and in Singapore about 950 kilometers (590 miles) from the epicenter.

The Charoenkrung Pracharat hospital in Bangkok evacuated hundreds of patients from a 24-story building, moving some out on hospital beds with oxygen tanks, a hospital official told Ruam Duay Chuay Kan radio station.

Apartment building residents in Bangkok said they heard cracking noises and felt rumbling and evacuated their buildings.

Residents of some high-rise apartments in Kuala Lumpur and Malaysia's northern tourist island of Penang were briefly evacuated as a precaution, condominium officials said. No immediate reports of damage were known, but workers were checking some buildings to determine whether there were cracks.

"There were mild tremors in different parts of Singapore,'' said a spokeswoman Singapore's National Environment Agency who declined to be named.

The quake came just three days after an 8.1 quake struck the ocean floor between Australia and Antarctica, causing buildings to shake hundreds of miles away but no serious damage or injury.

Quakes reaching a magnitude 8 are very rare. A quake registering magnitude 8 rocked Japan's northern island of Hokkaido on Sept. 25, 2003, injuring nearly 600 people. An 8.4 magnitude tremor that stuck off the coast of Peru on June 23, 2001, killed 74.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who was in Papua province visiting the victims of an earthquake there earlier this month, was "deeply concerned'' by the news of the earthquake, a spokesman said.--AP

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