A 6.1 magnitude earthquake struck Sumatra Island on the western coast on Friday. At least two people have been reportedly killed and many more have been injured. The tremors were felt as far as Malaysia and Singapore. The tremor made the residents run out of houses and buildings and caused evacuations in Malaysia. It has been reported that the tremor did not have the potential to cause Tsunami.
While talking to MetroTV, Dwikorita Karnawati, the head of Indonesian geophysics organization BMKG said that they were monitoring the situation and have also advised the people to remain alert. Initially, the BMKG agency has marked the earthquake as 6.2 magnitudes.
Suharyanto, the chief of the Indonesian disaster mitigation agency said at least two people lost their lives and some buildings, including a government office, a bank and some homes were damaged.
A hospital had been evacuated in the West Pasaman area, which is at a distance of around 17 km from the epicentre. Also, some panic was reported in the area. The fire department in Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia, informed that it had received multiple calls on tremors in the city, although, injuries or building damage has not been reported till now.
Singapore police Twitted that they had received multiple calls from people where quakes were reported, but there were no reports of any injuries.
Indonesia sits on the highly seismically active zone known as the ‘Pacific Ring of Fire’ and so reports frequent earthquakes. In 2009, an earthquake had destroyed parts of Padang and had killed over a thousand people.
In 2004, a massive earthquake with a magnitude of 9.1 had hit off the west coast of northern Sumatra, which had resulted in a tsunami that killed at least 225,000 people across Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and nine other countries.
