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Source: Reuters -
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A major earthquake struck off the city of Padang on the coast of
Indonesia's Sumatra Island, damaging houses, bringing down bridges
and starting fires, a witness said.
It was unclear if there were any casualties.
The 7.6 magnitude quake was felt around the region, with some
high-rise buildings in the city state of Singapore, 440 km to the
northeast, evacuating their staff.
Office buildings also shook in the Malaysian capital, Kuala
Lumpur.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre cancelled an earlier tsunami
warning.
Japan said no tsunami was expected there.
"Hundreds of houses have been damaged along the road. There are
some fires, bridges are cut and there is extreme panic here maybe
because water pipes are broken and there is flooding in the
streets," said a witness in the city. Phone lines were down.
Padang, the capital of Indonesia's West Sumatra province, sits on
one of the world's most active fault lines along the Ring of Fire
where the Indo-Australia plate grinds against the Eurasia plate to
create regular tremors and sometimes quakes.
A 9.15 magnitude quake, with its epicentre roughly 600 km northwest
of Padang, caused the 2004 tsunami which killed 232,000 people in
Indonesia's Aceh province, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, and other
countries across the Indian Ocean.
The depth of Wednesday's earthquake was measured at 85 km, the
United States Geological Survey said.
It revised down the magnitude of the quake from 7.9 to
7.6.
A series of tsunamis earlier on Wednesday smashed into the Pacific
island nations of American and Western Samoa, and Tonga killing
possibly more than 100 people, some washed out to sea, destroying
villages and injuring hundreds.
Long held fears
Geologists have long said Padang, with a population of 900,000, may
one day be destroyed by a huge earthquake because of its
location.
"Padang sits right in front of the area with the greatest potential
for an 8.9 magnitude earthquake," said Danny Hilman Natawidjaja, a
geologist at the Indonesian Science Institute, in February.
"The entire city could drown" in a tsunami triggered by such a
quake, he warned.
Several earthquake-prone parts of the country hold tsunami practice
drills, and the national disaster service sends alerts via
telephone text messages to subscribers.
But some experts have long said Indonesia needs to do more to
reduce the risk of catastrophe.
Padang needed to invest in better infrastructure, including more
roads and other escape routes, said Hugh Goyder, a consultant for
the United Nations' International Strategy for Disaster Reduction,
earlier in the year.
"The road goes parallel to the coast, which means it's difficult in
some areas to get away from the coast," Goyder said, adding that in
one part of the city, the only escape route is a narrow
bridge.
Sumatra is home to some of the country's largest oil fields as well
as its oldest and smallest liquefied natural gas terminal, although
there were no immediate reports of damage to those facilities.
