The death toll from a massive earthquake that rocked the island of West Java in the Indonesian archipelago on Monday rose to at least 56 people, a local official told AFP.
More than 700 people have been injured in the 5.6 Richter earthquake as rescue teams struggle to reach survivors trapped in the rubble as tremors still rage across the region. West Java Governor Ridwan Kamil said 56 people have died as a result of the earthquake, the epicenter of which was the city of Chianjur, about 75 km southeast of the capital Jakarta.
The National Disaster Mitigation Agency, which released figures late on local officials on the ground on Monday, said at a press conference that up to 700 people were injured and more than 300 homes were damaged or destroyed by the quake. A spokesman for the local government in Senakhor, West Java, said earlier: “Dozens of people have died. Hundreds or even thousands of houses were damaged. To date, we have counted 44 dead.” The quake that rocked Indonesia’s West Java province hit 5.6 degrees on Monday and its epicenter was at a depth of 10 kilometers, according to the Indonesian Agency for Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics.
A government official in Chanjur, the western Java city where the epicenter is located, said 20 people had died in a hospital in the area, according to Reuters. It was reported that the earthquake damaged dozens of buildings and forced residents to take to the streets of the capital in search of safety, including an Islamic boarding school, a hospital and other public facilities.
The quake was strongly felt in the Greater Jakarta area: “The quake was strong,” said Vidi Premadhania, a staff member in South Jakarta. My colleagues and I decided to leave our office on the ninth floor using the emergency stairs.” Maedita Valio, a 22-year-old lawyer, described panic among employees who ran out of the building when the earthquake hit. She said, “I was working when the ground began to shake under me. I clearly felt the earthquake. I tried to do nothing to understand what was happening, but it intensified and lasted for a while. “I feel a little dizzy and my legs are tired because I went down the stairs from the fourteenth floor,” she added.
Indonesia witnesses frequent earthquakes due to its location in the Pacific Ring of Fire, an arc of intense seismic activity where tectonic plates collide, stretching from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific Basin.
In February, a 6.2 magnitude earthquake in West Sumatra province killed at least 25 people and injured more than 460. In January 2021, a 6.2 magnitude earthquake in the province of West Sulawesi killed more than a hundred people and injured about 6,500. The powerful Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami in 2004 killed nearly 230,000 people in more than 10 countries, most of them in Indonesia.
