The earthquake has claimed the lives of at least seven people, according to reports. Image: Google Maps
An earthquake struck Indonesia’s Sumatra island on Friday. According to reports, it killed at least seven people and injured dozens more. The earthquake measured 6.2 on the Richter scale, and was felt in nearby Malaysia and Singapore.
It struck about 40 miles northwest of Bukittinggi in West Sumatra province, a few miles southeast of Nias. The earthquake was a shallow one, just 7.5 miles below the surface. Reuters reports that dozens of houses and buildings have collapsed and a landslide was triggered by the shaking.
Nearly 250 miles away in Malaysia, the shaking caused evacuations, including a hospital just ten miles from the epicenter. Witnesses said the earthquake lasted for more than a minute.
Authorities are still preparing for aftershocks. “We continue to monitor and advise people to remain on alert,” Dwikorita Karnawati, the head of Indonesia’s geophysics agency BMKG, told MetroTV.
Earthquakes are frequent in that part of the world, as it straddles the Ring-of-Fire, a zone where two plates of the Earth’s crust meet. It’s the same fault line that caused the catastrophic 2004 earthquake that measured 9.1. That event created a tsunami that killed 226,000 people in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, and nine other countries. Friday’s earthquake did not trigger a tsunami alert.
