Tsunami alert after Indonesia quake

JAKARTA, Thursday

Indonesia issued a tsunami warning after an earthquake struck near the Talaud Islands north of Sulawesi, the country’s meteorology agency said today.

An official at the agency said the quake was at a shallow depth of 10km and was felt strongly in the Talaud Islands.

The US Geographical Survey said the 7.5 magnitude quake had struck in the Talaud Islands, 323.5km south-southeast of General Santos, on the Philippine island of Mindanao. It put the quake at a depth of 33km.

Quake epicentre

The US Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said no destructive widespread tsunami threat existed. But the agency added that earthquakes of this size sometimes generate local tsunamis that could be destructive along coasts located within 100km of the quake epicentre.

It said Japan’s meteorological agency might issue tsunami messages for countries in the northwest Pacific and South China Sea, and if the information was conflicting, the more conservative information should be used for safety.

The powerful earthquake near the sparsely populated Talaud Islands injured at least 49 people, officials said.

Hundreds of buildings, including schools, churches and healthcare centres, were also damaged on the chain of islands that lie south of the Philippine island of Mindanao.

A reporter for Indonesia’s state radio station in the town of Tahuna said soon after the initial quake that frightened people had rushed out of their homes.

The big quake was followed by at least 20 aftershocks.

“At midday, there was a strong aftershock, everyone panicked and ran to higher ground, even patients being treated in hospital,” Mr Hutdam Manurat, a local government spokesman in the Talaud Islands, said by telephone.

Officials said they were still trying to assess damage in the scattered chain of islands lying on the edge of the Celebes Sea, with communications also severed in many areas.

Seismic activity

The islands with a population of just over 80,000 that are part of North Sulawesi Province, depend on agriculture and fishing.

The Indonesian archipelago suffers frequent earthquakes, lying in an area of intense seismic activity where several tectonic plates collide.

A huge Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 killed about 230,000 people across Asia, many of them in Indonesia. (Reuters)