An earthquake that struck Indonesia\u2019s West Java killed at least 268 people, many of them children, with 151 still missing, disaster relief officials said on Tuesday, as rescuers searched the rubble of destroyed buildings for survivors.
\nThe shallow 5.6-magnitude quake struck Indonesia\u2019s most populous province on Monday afternoon, causing significant damage to the town of Cianjur, about 75 kilometres southeast of the capital, Jakarta, and burying at least one village under a landslide.
\nDisaster agency chief Suharyanto told reporters that more than 1,000 people had been injured, 58,000 displaced and 22,000 houses damaged.
\nLandslides and rough terrain hampered rescue efforts on Tuesday, said Henri Alfiandi, head of the National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas).
\n\u201cThe challenge is the affected area is spread out \u2026 On top of that, the roads in these villages are damaged,\u201d Alfiandi told reporters.
\nMany of the victims were children who had been at school at the time the quake hit, he said.
\nWhile strong earthquakes of magnitude 6 or 7 are relatively common in Indonesia, often off-shore where fault lines run, Monday\u2019s quake of a lower magnitude had such deadly consequences because it struck on land at a relatively shallow depth.
\nOfficials said many of the dead were killed when poorly constructed buildings collapsed, with the president calling for reconstruction efforts to include earthquake-proof housing.
\nPresident Joko Widodo travelled to Cianjur on Tuesday to encourage rescuers.
\n\u201cMy instruction is to prioritise evacuating victims that are still trapped under rubble,\u201d he said.
\nSurvivors had gathered overnight in a Cianjur hospital parking lot. Some of the injured were treated in tents, others were hooked up to intravenous drips on the pavement as medical workers stitched up patients under torchlight.
\n\u201cEverything collapsed beneath me and I was crushed beneath this child,\u201d Cucu, a 48-year-old resident, told Reuters.
\n\u201cTwo of my kids survived, I dug them up \u2026 Two others I brought here, and one is still missing,\u201d she said through tears.
\n\u201cMany bodies are lying in the hospital grounds, it\u2019s very crowded,\u201d said her relative, Hesti.
\nIn one area, some victims held cardboard signs asking for food and shelter, with emergency supplies seemingly yet to reach them.
\n\u2018Swept away\u2019
\nDisaster officials said they would focus their efforts on one of the worst-hit areas of Cugenang, an area that was struck by a landslide triggered by the quake.
\nTelevision news channels showed footage of people digging brown earth by hand using hoes, sticks, crowbars and other tools.
\n\u201cAt least six of my relatives are still unaccounted for, three adults and three children,\u201d said Zainuddin, a resident of Cugenang, told Reuters.
\n\u201cIf it was just an earthquake, only the houses would collapse, but this is worse because of the landslide. In this residential area, there were eight houses, all of which were buried and swept away.\u201d
\nNational police chief Listyo Sigit Prabowo said more than 1,000 police had been deployed to assist in the recovery.
\nRescue efforts were complicated by electricity outages in some areas and 145 aftershocks, with officials warning more landslides could follow in the coming weeks.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s the rainy season in West Java, the peak is in December,\u201d Dwikorita Karnawati, head of the weather and geophysics agency, told reporters. \u201cSo we must anticipate any disaster that might follow, such as landslides.\u201d
\nStraddling the so-called Ring of Fire, a highly seismically active zone where different plates on the earth\u2019s crust meet, Indonesia has a history of devastating earthquakes.
\nIn 2004, a 9.1 magnitude quake off Sumatra island in northern Indonesia triggered a tsunami that struck 14 countries, killing 226,000 people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An earthquake that struck Indonesia\u2019s West Java killed at least 268 people, many of them children, with 151 still missing, disaster relief officials said on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3041,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}