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Indonesia quake damage limited to remote islands

By wire services
Published March 30, 2005

The damage from the earthquake that struck Monday night, one of the most powerful in a century, appears to be confined mostly to two tiny islands off the Indonesian coast, officials said Tuesday. But they said damage to the only runway there and poor visibility slowed the delivery of aid and medical care.

Officials said 330 or more bodies had been found on the hardest hit island, Nias, and its neighbor, Simeulue, but government and relief agencies said the toll could climb to more than 1,000.

The islands' remoteness, a breakdown of electrical power and communications and an apparent lack of organization among local officials hampered the flow of reliable information.

The earthquake was measured at a magnitude of 8.7, substantially less than the shock on Dec. 26 that measured 9.0 and sent tsunami waves through the surrounding oceans, taking the lives of close to 270,000 people. Each whole-number increase in the magnitude of a quake indicates a tenfold increase in the amount of ground motion.

Some reports indicated that tsunamis might have reached the inland side of Simeulue, and possibly parts of the Sumatra coast, according to Eric Geist, a geophysicist for the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif. He and other scientists also said there was clear evidence that a tightly focused tsunami burst southwest into the open waters of the southern Indian Ocean, passing well south of Sri Lanka and well to the west of Australia.

Budi Atmaji Adiputro, a spokesman for Indonesia's Coordinating Agency for National Disaster Relief, said rescuers had found 330 bodies, according to the Associated Press, although the toll was expected to rise as more bodies were discovered. Vice President Jusuf Kalla told El Shinta radio in Jakarta on Monday that the toll could rise as high as 2,000.

Dave Jenkins, a New Zealand physician who runs the relief agency SurfAid International in western Sumatra, said he feared for about 10,000 people living on the tiny Banyak Islands, close to the quake's epicenter. By late Tuesday, contact had not been made with the islands.

Aerial film of Nias and Simeulue islands showed damaged and collapsed homes but not the kind of devastation caused by the tsunami in December. On Indonesian television, residents were seen clustered by the sides of roads and carrying stretchers of the dead and injured on the backs of motorbikes. But first aid and rescue aircraft began arriving Tuesday and ferries were on their way with emergency supplies.

Hardest hit was the small city of Gunung Sitoli on Nias island, where the municipal housing chief, R. Zebua, told Indonesian reporters that all electricity and communications had been lost. The United Nations said Tuesday that a fledgling Indian Ocean tsunami warning system helped spread the alarm Monday night. John Harding of the U.N. International Strategy for Disaster Reduction said many governments had provided contact information, making it possible to quickly relay news about the quake and later sound the all clear.

"There are still some gaps and weaknesses, but overall the government is satisfied with what we did last night," said Suranand Vejjajiva, a Thai Cabinet minister.

Within minutes of the quake, the U.S. Geological Survey and Japan's Meteorological Agency reported a major temblor. Soon, government officials, the media and residents began responding in Thailand, India and Sri Lanka, all hit by the December tsunami.

President Bush on Tuesday offered the help and prayers of America to the victims. The U.S. Embassy in Jakarta contributed $100,000 for immediate relief while U.S. officials assess the damage and needs, said State Department spokesman Adam Ereli. He said there were no reports of Americans killed, injured or missing in the earthquake.

Information from the New York Times and Associated Press was used in this report.

[Last modified March 30, 2005, 01:04:14]