Strong Indonesian quakes cause panic, not tsunami

A boy cries as he is car­ried by his mother as they evac­u­ate to higher ground after a strong earth­quake was felt in Banda Aceh, Aceh province, Suma­tra island, Indone­sia, Wednes­day. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Heri Juanda)

FAKHRURRADZIE GADE

Asso­ci­ated Press

BANDA ACEH, Indone­sia — Two mas­sive earth­quakes trig­gered back-to-back tsunami warn­ings for Indone­sia on Wednes­day, send­ing pan­icked res­i­dents flee­ing to high ground in cars and on the backs of motor­cy­cles. No deadly waves or seri­ous dam­age resulted, and a watch for much of the Indian Ocean was lifted after a few hours.

Women and chil­dren cried in Aceh, where mem­o­ries are still raw of a 2004 tsunami that killed 170,000 peo­ple in the province alone. Oth­ers screamed “God is great” as they poured from their homes or searched fran­ti­cally for sep­a­rated fam­ily members.

Patients were wheeled out of hos­pi­tals, some still lying in their beds with drips attached to their arms. And at least one hotel guest was slightly injured when he jumped out of his window.

The U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey said the first 8.6-magnitude quake was a shal­low 22 kilo­me­ters (14 miles), hit­ting in the sea 270 miles (435 kilo­me­ters) from Aceh’s provin­cial capital.

An alert that fol­lowed from the Pacific Tsunami Warn­ing Cen­ter in Hawaii advised coun­tries all along the rim of the Indian Ocean, from Aus­tralia and India to as far off as Africa, that a seis­mi­cally charged wave could head their way.

Two deadly tsunamis in the last decade — the most recent off Japan just one year ago — have left the world much bet­ter prepared.

Sirens sounded along coast­lines and warn­ings spread like wild­fire by mobile phone text mes­sag­ing. Though often chaotic, evac­u­a­tions began imme­di­ately with streets clogged with traf­fic, espe­cially in Aceh.

The only wave to hit, though, was less than 30 inches (80 cen­time­ters) high, rolling to Indonesia’s emp­tied coastline.

Just as the region was sigh­ing relief, an 8.2-magnitude after­shock followed.

“We just issued another tsunami warn­ing,” Prih Har­jadi, from Indonesia’s geo­physics agency, told TVOne in a live interview.

He told his coun­try­men to stay clear of west­ern coasts.

Res­i­dents in Aceh could hardly believe it.

“What did we do to deserve this?” cried Aisyah Husaini, 47, who lost both her par­ents and a son in the 2004 tsunami. “What sins have we committed?”

“I’m so scared, I don’t want to lose my fam­ily again,” she said, cling­ing to her two chil­dren in a mosque in Banda Aceh, where hun­dreds of peo­ple sheltered.

Again, though, the threat quickly passed.

Experts said Wednesday’s quakes did not have the poten­tial to cre­ate mas­sive tsunamis because the fric­tion and shak­ing occurred hor­i­zon­tally, not ver­ti­cally. The earth’s tec­tonic plates slid against each other, cre­at­ing more of a vibra­tion in the water.

In con­trast, mega-thrust quakes cause the seabed to rise or drop ver­ti­cally, dis­plac­ing mas­sive amounts of water and send­ing tow­er­ing waves rac­ing across the ocean at jet­liner speeds.

Roger Mus­son, seis­mol­o­gist at the British geo­log­i­cal sur­vey who has stud­ied Sumatra’s fault lines, said ini­tially he’d been “fear­ing the worst.”

“But as soon as I dis­cov­ered what type of earth­quake it was … I felt a lot better.”

The tremors were felt in neigh­bor­ing Malaysia, where high-rise build­ings shook, and Thai­land, India and Bangladesh.

Those coun­tries, Sri Lanka and the Mal­dives evac­u­ated build­ings and beaches and read­ied relief efforts in case of disaster.

The World Mete­o­ro­log­i­cal Orga­ni­za­tion said com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tems set up after the 2004 tsunami appeared to have worked well.

“Our records indi­cate that all the national mete­o­ro­log­i­cal ser­vices in the coun­tries at risk by this tsunami have received the warn­ings in under five min­utes,” said Maryam Gol­naraghi, the head of WMO’s dis­as­ter risk reduc­tion program.

The alert was sent out by U.S. National Weather Ser­vice, which oper­ates a tsunami warn­ing sta­tion in Hawaii, she said.

Indone­sia strad­dles a series of fault lines that makes the vast island nation prone to vol­canic and seis­mic activity.

The giant 9.1-magnitude quake and tsunami on Dec. 26, 2004, killed 230,000 peo­ple in about a dozen nations.

Posted by AP News on Apr 11 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.