Massive Earthquake Hits Sumatra, Many Lives Lost Hospitals Overwhelmed By Dead And Injured

A massive earthquake rocked the Indonesian island of Sumatra on Saturday, killing at least 100 people.

Many more are feared dead as bodies are piled up inside rubble of buildings, said Ariana Yasin, chief of the Meteorological and Geophysical Agency in Jambi in southern Sumatra.

At least 500 houses were damaged, Yasin said, adding that “hospitals are unable to cope with the dead and the injured.”

The quake struck at 1:09 a.m. local time (11:09 a.m. PDT Friday), said Tanto Widianto of the Meteorological and Geophysical Agency in Jakarta. He put the magnitude at 7, updating his earlier measurement of 6.7.

The epicenter was 10 miles west of Sungai Penuh, 465 miles northwest of Jakarta.

The areas affected are in the foothills of Kerinci Mountain, part of a range of 93 peaks, many of them volcanic, that forms the spine of Sumatra Island.

The main road from Jambi, the provincial capital, to Kerinci district was cut off, said police in Jambi. “Rescue work is hampered because the area is so remote and because of heavy rains,” said police First Lieutenant Bintang Jahari.

A spokeswoman at the U.S. Geological Survey, Rebecca Phipps, said it was the largest earthquake in the area since June 3, 1909, when a 7.6-magnitude quake struck.

The tremor also was felt by some people in Singapore, where furniture and lamps shook for about 10 seconds in high-rise apartments, a television report said. Singapore is 290 miles (470 kilometers) northeast of Sumatra, the world’s fourth-largest island.

There were no reports of casualties in Singapore, but people were seen running out of their homes, the television said.

Earlier reports had said that 15 people were killed in Kematan town in the central Sumatra province of Jambi, and five died in Kerinci-Semurup town, where 50 houses were reported damaged, Widianto said.

Although it has a population of 37 million, Sumatra is one of the more sparsely settled islands in Indonesia, but some areas are overcrowded because the government has resettled 4 million people from neighboring Java.

Indonesia, a quake-prone archipelago nation, has 190 million people.

Sumatra, 290 miles southwest of Singapore, accounts for over 60 percent of the country’s total oil production.

In February 1994, a 6.5-magnitude earthquake killed more than 200 people and destroyed thousands of buildings in the Western part of Lampung.