Indonesia quake kills at least 11, hurts 65

[tropicana]

Indonesia earthquake kills 11, hurts 65
Friday November 26, 2004 - 8:18PM

At least 11 people were killed and 65 injured when a strong earthquake shook Indonesia's Papua province on Friday, collapsing buildings and starting fires, officials said.

A series of aftershocks continued to rattle the coastal town of Nabire, 3,000km north-east of Jakarta, hours after the morning quake that was measured at 6.4 on the Richter scale by the National Earthquake Centre.

People were setting up tents outside their houses because they were afraid to be inside, he said.
Eleven people have died, including three children, and 30 are now being treated at hospitals.

At least 65 people were injured, although not all of them where taken to hospitals.
Nabire airport had been closed due to damage.
Planes cannot land, even the smallest plane. The tower might be collapsed. The Indosat building and several churches collapsed.

Indosat (PT Indonesian Satellite Corp Tbk) is the country's second-largest telecommunications firm.

The epicentre of the earthquake, which struck at 11.25am (1325 AEDT), was on land, some 17km to the south of Nabire.

The Hong Kong observatory and Geoscience Australia recorded the earthquake at 7.2 on the Richter scale.

Geoscience Australia duty seismologist Phil Cummins said there had been no reports of damage in Australia, after a report the quake had been felt in Cairns, in the north of Queensland, and Darwin, in the Northern Territory.

But, he said, one person inside a high rise in Darwin reported that they might have felt the quake.
"It's not unusual for people in high buildings in Darwin to feel earthquakes in Indonesia," Dr Cummins said.

"It's just a slight swaying - the height of the building can sometimes amplify the longer periods of these distant earthquakes."

Earthquakes often occur in Indonesia, an archipelago of 17,000 islands that lies along the Pacific Ring of Fire where plate boundaries intersect and volcanoes regularly erupt.

A quake in the Nabire area in February killed at least 37 people.

In December 1992, an earthquake measuring 6.8 on the open-ended Richter scale killed about 2,200 people on the island of Flores south-west of Nabire.
Many of those who died were killed by massive waves triggered by the earthquake.

-justin-