Rahmat Triyono, head of the agency’s earthquake and tsunami division, later confirmed that a wierd wave had hit town.
People living lots of of kilometers from the epicenter reported feeling powerful shaking hours after a smaller quake killed at the very least one person in the identical a part of the Southeast Asian archipelago.
There were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries from the most recent quake, but it surely was stronger than a series of quakes that killed lots of of individuals on the island of Lombok this summer.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the quake struck near central Sulawesi at a shallow depth of about 10 kilometers just before 6 p.m. local time.
“There are reports that many buildings collapsed in consequence of the earthquake,” national disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said in a press release. “The residents panicked and ran from home.”
Photos provided by the agency showed a severely damaged shopping center in Palu, with at the very least one floor collapsing onto the ground below.
I used to be about to begin praying, but then I heard people shouting, “Earthquake!” earthquake!’ so I finished
Other photos showed severe damage to buildings, debris strewn across the road and huge cracks running through sidewalks.
Live video on Facebook showed long traffic jams formed in parts of the region as terrified residents piled into cars, trucks and motorcycles to flee to higher ground after the tsunami warning.
Nugroho said search and rescue teams were dispatched to the worst-affected areas.
Friday’s tremors were centered 78 km north of Palu, the capital of Central Sulawesi province, but were felt within the far south of the island, in its largest city Makassar and on the neighboring island of Kalimantan, the Indonesian a part of the island of Borneo.
The initial tremors got here as evening prayers were about to start on the holiest day of the week on this planet’s largest Muslim-majority country.
This was followed by a series of powerful aftershocks, including one with a magnitude of 5.7.
“I was about to start praying, but I heard people shouting, ‘Earthquake!’ earthquake!’ so I stopped,” said Andi Temmaeli from Wajo, south of Palu.
Lisa Soba Palloan, a resident of Toraja, also south of Palu, said locals felt several earthquakes on Friday.
“The last one was quite big,” she said. “Everyone came out of their houses screaming in fear.”
Earthquakes of comparable magnitude could cause massive damage to poorly built or designed structures, including toppling chimneys, columns and partitions, in line with the USGS.
Indonesia is some of the disaster-prone countries on this planet.
It lies on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, where tectonic plates collide and plenty of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur.
This summer, a series of powerful quakes hit Lombok, killing greater than 550 people on the vacation island and neighboring Sumbawa.
About 1,500 people were injured and about 400,000 residents were displaced after their homes were destroyed.
Indonesia has been hit by a series of other deadly quakes, including the devastating 9.1-magnitude quake that hit the coast of Sumatra in 2004.
The quake triggered a tsunami that killed 220,000 people across the region, including 168,000 in Indonesia.
The Boxing Day disaster was the world’s third-biggest earthquake since 1900 and raised the ocean floor by 15 meters in some places.
The Indonesian province of Aceh was the worst-affected area, however the tsunami affected coastal areas so far as Africa.
Among the country’s other major earthquakes, a 6.3-magnitude quake in 2006 shook the densely populated Java region near town of Yogyakarta, killing about 6,000 people and injuring 38,000.
More than 420,000 people were left homeless and roughly 157,000 homes were destroyed.
A yr earlier, in 2005, an 8.7-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Sumatra, which is especially quake-prone, killing 900 people and injuring 6,000.
It caused widespread destruction on the western island of Nias.
This article appeared within the print edition of the South China Morning Post as: Tsunami ruins buildings in city after 7.5 magnitude earthquake hits Indonesia
