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A collapsed shopping mall after an earthquake in Padang, on Indonesia's Sumatra island -
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Indonesian health officials say the death toll from a powerful earthquake in Sumatra could rise into the thousands.
The 7.6 magnitude quake struck near the city of Padang, killing
dozens of people and trapping many others in rubble.
Priyadi Kardono, spokesman for the national disaster agency,
earlier gave the death toll of 100-200 in the city of 900,000.
But with locals saying about 500 houses have caved in, an
official from the Health Ministry fears the dead may number in the
thousands.
There are still "thousands of people trapped in the rubble of
buildings", says Rustam Pakaya, the head of the ministry's
disaster centre in Jakarta.
With communications to the area cut, officials have struggled to
get details of casualties and damage.
"The big buildings are down. The concrete buildings are all down, the hospitals, the main markets, down and burned. A lot of people died in there. A lot of places are burning," an Australian businesswoman Jane Liddon told Australian radio from Padang.
"Most of the damage is in the town centre in the big buildings. The little houses, the people's houses, there are a few damaged, but nothing dramatic. It's not all a rubble heap in terms of smaller buildings."
Australia's international Aid Minister Bob McMullan says he fears the death toll will be "large" and has offered emergency assistance if it is required.
"We are, of course, ready to assist. They are very close friends
and neighbours. They know that we are here and available to help.
They just have to ask," he says.
Smashed homes
TV footage shows piles of debris and smashed houses after the earthquake, which caused widespread panic.
The main hospital has collapsed, roads are cut off by landslides and Metro Television says the roof of Padang airport has caved in.
The disaster is the latest in a spate of natural and man-made calamities to hit Indonesia, a sprawling archipelago of 226 million people.
Welfare Minister Aburizal Bakrie says the damage could be on a
par with that caused by a 2006 quake in the central Java city of
Yogyakarta that killed 5,000 people and damaged 150,000
homes.
"Hundreds of houses have been damaged along the road. There are
some fires, bridges are cut and there is extreme panic here," says
a witness in the city.
Broken water pipes have triggered flooding, he says. Officials
say power has been severed in the city.
The quake was felt around the region, with some high-rise buildings
in Singapore, 440 km to the northeast, evacuating staff.
Office buildings also shook in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur.
Padang, 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.
Geologists have long warned the city may one day be destroyed by a huge earthquake because of its location.
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.
