Earthquake & Tsunami 17 July 2006

AM Report :-: Indonesian tsunami death toll hits 531

(Scroll down for newswire links)

Surfersvillage Global Surf News, 19 July, 2006 : - -  PANGANDARAN, Indonesia - Indonesia pledged to build a nationwide tsunami alert system as soldiers pulled bodies from ravaged beaches, homes and hotels Tuesday. Parents searched tearfully for their children and the death toll hit at least 531, with 275 people missing.

Bodies covered in white sheets piled up at makeshift morgues, while others lay beneath the blazing sun in the tourist resort of Pangandaran, a 6-month-old baby among them. The search for survivors continued Tuesday, with parents among the last to give up. "The water was too strong," said Irah as she dug through a pile of rubble with her bare hands, close to the spot where she last saw her 6-year-old son. "Oh God. Eki, where are you?"

The magnitude 7.7 undersea quake on Monday triggered walls of water more than six feet high that crashed into a 110-mile stretch of beach on Java island, an area spared by the devastating 2004 Asian tsunami. The waves destroyed houses, restaurants and hotels and tossed boats, cars and motorbikes far inland.

The government said Wednesday that emergency workers recovered dozens of more bodies, pushing the death toll to 531 with 275 people missing. Almost all the victims were Indonesians, but a Pakistani, a Swede and a Dutch citizen were among those killed, officials said. At least 42,000 people fled their homes, either because they were destroyed or in fear of another tsunami, adding to the difficulty of counting casualties.

At the area's main hospital, in the town of Banjar, medics scrambled to treat a steady stream of patients, most from the Pangandaran coast. Some slept on dirty mattresses on the floor, while others were treated in the admissions hall. Among the handful of foreign patients was Hamed Abukhamiss, a 40-year-old Saudi who was eating french fries with his family at a beach-side cafe when the tsunami came into view on the horizon.

His 12-year-old son, Yousif, saw the wave approaching through binoculars, but no one believed him when he yelled "Tsunami!" Less than a minute later the family was swept away in the torrent of water, and Abukhamiss' wife and 4-year-old son were killed. "I'll bury them here, but I will never come back," he said, crying in his hospital bed. "How am I going to tell my daughter her mother is dead?"

Monday's quake struck at 3:24 p.m. about 150 miles beneath the ocean floor, causing tall buildings to sway hundreds of miles away in the capital, Jakarta. After the quake, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center and Japan's Meteorological Agency issued warnings of a possible tsunami. It struck Java about an hour later.

Science and Technology Minister Kusmayanto Kadiman said Indonesia received the bulletins 45 minutes before the tsunami hit but did not announce them because they did not want to cause unnecessary alarm. "If it (the tsunami) did not occur, what would have happened?" he told reporters in Jakarta, noting that there was no effective way to spread a warning without a system of sirens or alarms in place.

He said Indonesia now planned to speed up plans for a nationwide warning system. Indonesia was hardest hit by a 2004 tsunami that killed at least 216,000 people in a dozen Indian Ocean nations — with more than half the deaths occurring in Sumatra island's Aceh province. Though the country started to install a warning system after that disaster, it is still in the early stages. The government had been planning to extend the alert system to Java — which was hit by a quake in May that killed more than 5,800 people — in 2007.

Answering reporters' questions as to why no warning was issued on Monday, Vice President Jusuf Kalla claimed there was no need because most people had fled inland after the earthquake, fearing a tsunami.

"After the quake occurred, people ran to the hills ... so in actual fact there was a kind of natural early warning system," he said. However, of dozens of people interviewed by The Associated Press in Pangandaran on Tuesday, only one person said he felt a slight tremor. None said there was a mass movement of people to higher ground before the tsunami, though some residents recognized the danger when they saw the wall of water approaching.

Source AP

Owners of a surf shop destroyed by the tsunami, from left, Indonesian Agus
Kuswanda  and his Australian partners, Andrew Warnbrunn, Graham Malligan,
and Lyal Mackintosh, stand in the wreckage of their shop Tuesday, July 18,

Related Newswire reports:
Waves hit Indonesia after tsunami warning AFP
Quake shakes Indonesia's Java, at least 5 dead Reuters
Tsunami warning issued for India's Nicobar islands AFP
Quake Triggers Indonesian Tsunami; 5 Dead AP
Tidal surges reach Australian territories after Indonesian quake AFP
Tsunami death toll hits 80 on Indonesia's Java: Red Cross Reuters
Death Toll in Indonesia Tsunami at 86 AP
At least 105 dead as Indonesia's tsunami nightmare returns  AFP
At least 172 dead in Indonesian tsunami: relief workers AFP
Indonesia tsunami toll 231, hunt on for more Reuters
Rescuers hunt for Indonesia tsunami survivors AFP
Aussie surfers tell of the tsunami ordeal AAP
Rescuers hunt for Indonesia tsunami survivors as toll mounts AFP
Indonesia tsunami toll rises to 350 Reuters
Indonesians recover bodies after tsunami AFP
Indonesia Quake Too Weak for Oceanwide Tsunami Rueters
Aid trickles to Indonesia tsunami survivors AFP
Boy surfer tells of 'pretty scary' tsunami encounter Reuters




The following information is provided by the USGS National Earthquake Information Center. These parameters are preliminary and subject to revision. A magnitude 7.2 earthquake SOUTH OF JAVA, INDONESIA has occurred at: 9.29S 107.35E  Depth  49km  Mon Jul 17 08:19:30 2006 UTC

Time: Universal Time         (UTC) Mon Jul 17 08:19:30 2006
Time Near Epicenter          Mon Jul 17 15:19:30 2006
Eastern Daylight Time  (EDT) Mon Jul 17 04:19:30 2006
Central Daylight Time  (CDT) Mon Jul 17 03:19:30 2006
Mountain Daylight Time (MDT) Mon Jul 17 02:19:30 2006
Pacific Daylight Time  (PDT) Mon Jul 17 01:19:30 2006
Alaska Daylight Time   (ADT) Mon Jul 17 00:19:30 2006
Hawaii Standard Time   (HST) Sun Jul 16 22:19:30 2006

Location with respect to nearby cities:
225 km (140 miles) NE of Christmas Island
240 km (150 miles) SSW of Tasikmalaya, Java, Indonesia
260 km (160 miles) S of Bandung, Java, Indonesia
355 km (220 miles) S of JAKARTA, Java, Indonesia

For maps, additional information, and subsequent updates, pease consult:
 http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/usqgaf.php .

Flinn-Engdahl Region Number = 282

For the most significant earthquakes, information may also be available from the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program home page at http://earthquake.usgs.gov/ and the USGS home page at http://www.usgs.gov/ .

The earthquake information delivered through Bigquake notifications is preliminary.  Subsequent review usually results in some revision to the
data, and all users are advised to check the USGS earthquake program pages at http://earthquake.usgs.gov for updates. Data users are cautioned to consider carefully the provisional nature of the information before using it for decisions that concern personal or public safety or the conduct of business that involves substantial monetary or operational consequences. 

Earthquakes are a common occurrence, and many are either not large enough to cause damage or not located sufficiently close to populations centers to produce damage.  This message does not imply an impending threat. Bigquake is an informational tool and NOT an earthquake or tsunami warning system. The USGS does not produce tsunami warnings. For the information about tsunamis, please refer to the information given in the NOAA website http://tsunami.gov .

Events of magnitude 6.5 or greater are generally reviewed and posted to Bigquake within 2 hours of their occurrence and events of magnitude 5.5
to 6.5 are generally posted to Bigquake within 24 hours.  Additionally, processing and sending the messages typically takes 30 minutes.  The USGS
cannot guarantee the receipt or timeliness of an e-mail after sending.

CHRONOLOGY - Disasters to Hit Indonesia Since 2004
 

July 17 - A strong undersea earthquake struck off Indonesia's West Java province on Monday, triggering a tsunami that killed at least 341 people, local news reports said. The US-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said the quake, which hit at 0819 GMT, was of 7.2 magnitude. Following is a list of some of the other disasters, man-made and natural, to hit Indonesia since the Asian tsunami of 2004:

Dec 26, 2004 - Nearly 132,000 Indonesians are killed and over 37,000 listed as missing after a 9.15 magnitude earthquake off Indonesia and a tsunami triggered by it in the Indian ocean region. The global toll reaches nearly 230,000 dead with over 43,000 missing.

Feb 21, 2005 - At least 96 are killed in landslide that sweeps through two West Java villages near a garbage dump.

March 28, 2005 - Nearly 1,000 are believed killed after a quake of magnitude 8.7 hits the coast of Sumatra.

May 28, 2005 - Explosion rocks a market in eastern Indonesian town of Tentena, on island of Sulawesi, killing 22.

July 20, 2005 - Indonesia confirms first deaths from bird flu, saying tests on a father and his two young daughters show they had virus. To date there have been 41 confirmed Indonesian deaths from bird flu, 30 of them this year.

Sept 1, 2005 - Landslide on island of Sumatra kills 14 and leaves more than a dozen missing.

Sept 5, 2005 - Domestic airliner operated by local carrier Mandala Airlines crashes in residential area of Indonesia's third biggest city Medan, killing 102 aboard and 47 local residents in an inferno on the ground.

Oct 1, 2005 - Three bombs rip through popular tourist areas on Indonesian resort island of Bali, killing 23, including three suicide bombers. Around 150 are wounded in attacks at Jimbaran beach and Kuta beach. Attacks came almost three years after 202 people, mainly tourists, are killed in another bombing.

Dec 31, 2005 - Bomb packed with nails explodes in crowded Christian market selling pork ahead of New Year celebrations in eastern Indonesian city of Palu, capital of volatile Central Sulawesi province, killing seven people and wounding 53.

May 15, 2006 - Mount Merapi volcano erupts with clouds of hot gas and rains ash on surrounding areas, sending some nearby villagers who had been reluctant to leave scurrying for safety.

May 27, 2006 - Earthquake rocks area around ancient royal city of Yogyakarta killing at least 5,000 and destroying or damaging 150,000 homes.
 

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Sources:
Newswires
Kirk Wilcox - Quiksilver

Java Tsunami - Surfersvillage