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5.1-magnitude earthquake jolts Java |
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July 13, 2000
CIJENGKOL, Indonesia (AP) - Several people were injured and dozens of houses destroyed after a strong earthquake rocked Indonesia's main island of Java on Wednesday. Meteorological and Geophysics Agency officials said the 5.1 magnitude quake's epicenter was 33 kilometers (20 miles) deep, located near the town Ciranggon, about 120 kilometers (72 miles) south of Jakarta. In some of the worst hit areas around the town of Cijengkol, several people were injured when walls and roofs collapsed and fell on them, said Lukas Mulyana, a community leader. "Hundreds of houses are damaged and several totally destroyed, but we were lucky as no one was killed," he said. Mulyana said a mosque and a school also had been badly damaged by the quake, which hit at 8:10 a.m. (0110 GMT) and lasted for 15 seconds. Hundreds of residents refused to return into their houses as weaker aftershocks continued throughout Wednesday. Many people pitched makeshift tents in their front yards or next to the roads. Several searched through the ruins of the homes, looking for valuables they could salvage. Ida Hamid, a mother of four, said she was having breakfast when the temblor shook their house so badly that walls collapsed and part of the rook fell in. "We were so very scared," she said as her children played in the ruins of their home. "We all fled into the fields. The sound was like thunder." Five other people were injured when about 2,400 employees of Japanese electronics giant Aiwa panicked and tried to flee from their plant, said Subrata, a local government official. The injured were crushed in the rush to escape. Another 35 workers were treated for shock. The factory building was seriously damaged with parts of its roof having fallen in. A hospital in Cibadak had also been damaged, Subrata said. The quake was also felt in Bandung, another large city in western Java, and Indonesia's capital, Jakarta, where many people fled their homes and offices. Wednesday's temblor occurred one month after a massive 7.9 magnitude quake struck parts of Sumatra island, killing more than 100 people and leaving thousands homeless. An earthquake with a magnitude of 5.0 can cause considerable damage if it is centered in heavily populated areas. Indonesia is prone to earthquakes because of its location on the Pacific "Ring of Fire" - a line of volcanically active areas stretching from the western coast of the Americas across to Japan, Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. |