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Java earthquake in Indonesia injures hundreds.
An earthquake on the Indonesian island of Java has killed at least 162 people and injured hundreds more, the region’s governor Ridwan Kamil said.
The magnitude 5.6 earthquake struck the city of Cianjur in West Java at a depth of 10 km (six kilometers), according to data from the US Geological Survey.
According to local and international media, many people were taken to hospital and many of them are being treated outside.
Rescuers were working late into the night to try to save others who were still believed to be trapped under the collapsed building. The area where the earthquake struck was densely populated and often demoralized, with well-constructed buildings reduced to rubble in many places.
Earlier, Indonesia’s National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) said at least 62 people died, according to new data. Speaking to local media, Mr. Kamil said that about 326 people were injured in the earthquake, noting that “many of them had broken bones when they were crushed in the rubble”.
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But he warned that some residents were still “trapped in remote areas” and said officials “believe the number of injuries and deaths will increase over time”. The governor of West Java also said that more than 13,000 people were displaced by the disaster, and BNPB said that more than 2,200 houses were damaged by the earthquake.
Herman Suherman, the director of the Cianjur municipality, said that most of the injuries were broken bones of people trapped by debris in the house. “Ambulances continue to arrive at the hospital from the countryside,” he said earlier in the day, according to the AFP news agency. “There are many families in these communities who have not been evacuated.”
Many of the injured were treated outside in the hospital parking lot after the hospital was out of power for several hours after the earthquake, the governor of West Java said. On Monday evening, Mr. Kamil wrote on Twitter that it would take up to three days for full power to be restored to the area. He added that phone reception was still poor and was causing “a lot of problems” for officials.
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The tremors could be felt in the capital Jakarta about 100 km from where people were evacuated from high-rise buildings. Company workers evacuated buildings in urban and commercial areas during the tremors, which began at 1:21 pm Monday Western Indonesia Time (WIT), the company said. “I was working when the ground beneath me shook, and I felt the shaking very well. I tried not to do anything to cure what it was, but it was strong and lasted for a while,” lawyer Mayadita Waluyo told AFP.
“We’re used to these [earthquakes] in Jakarta, but now people are scared, so we’re scared,” a company official named Ahmad Ridwan told Reuters news agency.
Earthquakes are common in Indonesia, which sits on the tectonically active “Ring of Fire” region in the Pacific. The country has a history of earthquakes and storms, more than 2,000 people died in an earthquake in Sulawesi in 2018.
