Deadly waves 'strike Indonesia'

From: By staff writers and wires

July 17, 2006

SEVERAL people are dead or missing after waves hit buildings on the south coast of Indonesia's Java island today following an undersea earthquake, witnesses told local radio station ElShinta.

"Waves suddenly came and we ran to the hills. Four people from my group are still missing," said a woman who gave her name as Teti, and who said she had been accompanying Dutch tourists when the waves hit.
"Many small hotels were destroyed," she said. "Hotels on the beach front of Pangandaran ... the front parts are hit. Boats have been thrown into hotels," she said.

She told the radio that she saw three dead bodies being collected by residents.

Local police said residents found a corpse on the beach after they returned from higher ground.

"We've heard that there are several victims but so far we have received report of one person killed," First Brigadier Ujang told AFP.

Another resident said the damage was "very bad".

"Children were crying and many are injured," he told ElShinta. Pangandaran is on the south coast of West Java province, around 270km southeast of Jakarta.

The undersea earthquake with a magnitude of 7.2 struck off Java earlier today, the US-based Pacific Tsunami Centre said, but there have been no reports of casualties or damage.

Indonesia's state meteorology and geophysics agency initially rated the quake at 5.5 magnitude.

The Pacific Tsunami Centre said that there was a possibility of a local tsunami, but no threat of a destructive widespread tsunami.

Officials in the nearest major town to the epicentre, Ciamis, said more than an hour after the quake hit at 8.19am GMT (6.19pm AEST).

Earlier today, in Jakarta, meteorology agency seismologist Fauzi said: "We have received no damage report. We don't know how long it lasted but probably it was below one minute."

Some occupants of high-rise Jakarta buildings felt the quake, which had an epicentre more than 30km under the Indian Ocean off Java's southern Pangandaran beach.

Earthquakes are frequent in Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous country.

A massive earthquake in December 2004 triggered a tsunami that left 170,000 people killed or missing in Aceh province.

In May, an earthquake near the central Java city of Yogyakarta killed more than 5700 people.

Indonesia's 17,000 islands sprawl along a belt of intense volcanic and seismic activity, part of what is called the "Pacific Ring of Fire".

From Reuters and AFP