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Another Indonesian Quake (Intensity 8.7)
« on: Mar 29th, 2005, 8:10pm » |
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Luck's key role in Sumatra quake
Official death toll stands at 330
Tuesday, March 29, 2005 Posted: 7:50 PM EST (0050 GMT)
(CNN) -- Three months after catastrophic tsunamis killed more than 170,000 people, luck helped spare Indonesia and the Indian Ocean region from widespread devastation when another massive earthquake struck Monday, a geologist said.
Indonesian officials report 330 people are dead on the islands of Nias and Simeulue off Sumatra from Monday's quake, which was centered 60 miles (97 kilometers) south on the same fault line as the December 26 earthquake.
The latest quake was smaller than the December one that triggered the tsunamis, and the Earth ruptured in a different direction, Patrick Leahy of the U.S. Geological Survey said.
"The rupture moved to the southeast," Leahy said on CNN's "American Morning."
"It was a different segment of the same fault, but because of that direction and other variables -- for example the depth of water where the earthquake occurred, the materials -- all of those factors really came to play in terms of whether it would create a tsunami or not."
The December quake and the resulting tsunamis caused massive damage around the Indian Ocean basin, ultimately leaving more than 300,000 people dead or missing from South Asia to Africa. ( Full story)
The absence of an early warning system in the Indian Ocean has been decried as contributing to the large death toll. (Full story)
Monday's quake sparked regionwide fears of a replay of the December tragedy. Local and national governments issued tsunami warnings and ordered evacuations of coastal areas.
But no tsunamis were reported along Indonesia's island coasts, and India, Thailand and Malaysia canceled tsunami warnings early Tuesday.
The United Nations and International Red Cross have dispatched teams to the area, particularly the two islands off Sumatra.
"The initial information we're getting is that it is perhaps not as serious as first anticipated," said Michele Lipner with U.N. Humanitarian Affairs in Banda Aceh, Indonesia.
Nias appeared to be the hardest hit, with lighter damage on nearby Simeulue. Lipner said overall structural damage did not appear to be serious.
Indonesia's National Coordinating Agency for Disaster Management and Refugees put the official death toll at 330. Budi Atmaji Adiputro, the agency's chief of staff, said 230 of those were killed on Nias and 100 on Simeulue.
Earlier, some officials had suggested the toll could climb as high as several thousand.
The quake hit at about 11:09 p.m. (11:09 a.m. ET) Monday. In the following hours, a series of smaller tremors rattled the region, the USGS said.
The most recent hit at about 12:15 p.m. Tuesday (12:15 a.m. ET) with a 5.8 magnitude. All have been in the same general area and at about the same 20-mile (30-kilometer) depth.
Monday's event marked the first time in recorded seismic history -- more than a century -- that two quakes of such size have happened so close together, said Kerry Sieh, a geology professor at the California Institute of Technology.
Earlier this month, seismologists from the University of Ulster-Coleraine in Northern Ireland warned that a buildup of stress on faults in Sumatra was likely to trigger another large earthquake in the Indian Ocean region.
In a report published in science journal Nature, the researchers said stress was building not only in the Sumatra fault, but also on the adjacent fault zone known as the Sunda Trench, located under the sea west of Sumatra. (Full story)
Twelve "great" earthquakes had occurred since 1906, Sieh said. Monday's quake ranked as great -- the most powerful of seven levels on an open-ended scale.
Monitoring agencies variously reported the magnitude of Monday's quake as 8.7 and 8.5. The U.S. Geological Survey reported the former, and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center the latter. The December one measured at 9.3 by the Pacific center and 9.0 by the USGS.
"It's common to have discrepancies like that," said the center's Charles McCreery.
An 9.0 earthquake would release about double the amount of energy as an 8.7 quake, a USGS geologist said. (Full story)
Each full point rise is associated with a 33-times increase in energy, he said.
U.S. President George W. Bush on Tuesday offered his condolences to the victims of the latest disaster and said the United States was prepared to help.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard is again sending military transport aircraft and a supply ship to Indonesia to help the earthquake relief effort there.
Two Hercules C-130 transports leave Sydney for Sumatra on Wednesday morning carrying medical supplies and a medical evacuation team. A third aircraft is on standby if needed. (Full story)
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