More than 2,000 people fled the area to seek shelter elsewhere to avoid the dangers of aftershocks. The 6.4-magnitude quake caused the roof of a recently built church to collapse.
Jakarta () – More than 2,000 people from the Mentawai Islands, 150 km west of Sumatra, have fled their homes after the 6.4-magnitude earthquake that struck the area yesterday. There are 494 evacuee families housed in three different places, but the number is expected to increase,” said an official with the Disaster Risk and Mitigation Agency.
Dozens of homes and a newly built Catholic church (St. Peter Simalibeg) were damaged. “The roof of the church collapsed and the structure of the cross that crowns the temple also broke,” he told a Catholic professor from Siberut, an island in the small archipelago.
Although there is no tsunami warning, the Indonesian Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) warned that there could be aftershocks, with the risk of compromising the structure of other buildings. According to BMKG, yesterday’s earthquake is “dangerous” because the epicenter, 12 km off the western coast of Siberut, occurred on a major fault.
Precise data on damage and injuries are not yet available. In 2010, a 7.2 magnitude earthquake in the Mentawai left more than 300 dead and generated a tsunami with waves 3 meters high.
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