Up to 2000 dead on island after inevitable quake

An aerial view of damaged buildings in the town of Gunungsitoli on Indonesia's Nias Island. Picture / Reuters

Until today the Indonesia's Nias island was known as a surfer's paradise for a fabled right hand break. Now the palm-fringed island which was at the epicentre of the 8.7 magnitude earthquake off Sumatra could well become a tomb for hundreds to thousands of people.

Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla said between 1000 and 2000 people could have been killed in the quake - one of the eight biggest in the world since 1900 - although a local mayor put the figure more conservatively at around 200.

"Roughly it is expected between 1000 and 2000 died,'' Kalla told El Shinta news radio of the quake, which struck near Nias island off Sumatra.

Agus Mendrofa, deputy mayor of Gunungsitoli on Nias, was quoted by Metro TV as saying some 10,000 of the town's 27,000 population had fled for higher ground.

"Gunungsitoli is now like a dead town. The situation here is extreme panic,'' he said.

A senior police officer in Gunungsitoli told Reuters that many people were trapped in damaged buildings.

Another officer said up to three-fourths of the town was damaged.

The quake, which struck close to or after midnight across the region, spread terror in western Indonesia, Sri Lanka and coastal parts of India, Malaysia and Thailand, the areas devastated by the Boxing Day tsunami.

The epicentre was very close to that of the December 26 quake, measuring 9.0, which triggered a tsunami that left nearly 300,000 people dead or missing across Asia.

Today sirens wailed and tens of thousands of panic-stricken people were evacuated after tsunami warnings, while others drove or ran from coastlines to higher ground.

But there were no signs of a tsunami up to nine hours after the 1609 GMT (4.09 NZT Tuesday) quake and alerts were later withdrawn in most areas.

Volunteers at New Zealand-founded SurfAid's base on the Nias island were all safe and well, the agency's New Zealand spokesman Tony Walsh told NZPA.

"(The base camp) got rocked pretty badly but no damage.

"At the moment we're just trying to find out exactly who we've got up there," he said.

Nias is a popular surfing spot but lies off Indonesia's more well-trodden tourist trails, Mr Walsh said.

"April is the start of the season so I would say there would be surfers there now. Yacht charters would be starting from now."

SurfAid staff have been working for the last 2-1/2 months as part of the relief effort on the island, which was badly hit by the Boxing Day earthquake and subsequent tsunami.

The Boxing Day quake killed at least 340 Nias residents and left 10,000 homeless.

SEISMOLOGISTS WARNED OF DISASTER

Despite the promises made in January, no early warning system is yet in place in the Indian Ocean. Preparation is under way, but the arsenal of wave and pressure sensors, seismologists and satellites is not expected to grind into action until December 2006.

Seismologists have been warning since the Boxing Day tsunami that another major disaster is likely along the tectonic plates shifting under the Indian Ocean. In the immediate aftermath of the Boxing Day tsunami, world leaders met in Indonesia and pledged to set up an early warning system for the region which could save lives in the event of a repeat disaster.

Preparation is under way, but the arsenal of wave and pressure sensors, seismologists and satellites is not expected to grind into action until December 2006.

Authorities will not be able to say they were not warned: experts have been saying for months that it is only a matter of time before a build-up of stress along fault lines in the Indian Ocean explodes in another powerful earthquake.

Seismologists say that stress has been intensifying not only on the Sumatra fault, where the first quake struck, but also on an adjacent fault zone known as the Sunda Trench, located under the sea west of Sumatra.

Just weeks ago, scientists at the University of Ulster-Coleraine in Northern Ireland released a report predicting another significant Sumatran quake high on the Richter scale. The Irish scientists stopped short of specifying a likely date for the subsequent quake.

But they pointed out that earthquakes tend to re-occur within a few years of each other, or even several months, as they cluster in areas called subduction zones where two or more plates of the Earth's crust grind and overlap.

Citing the example of the two Turkish earthquakes which hit Istanbul first and then Duzce three months later, researchers reported that stress levels building up along both Indian Ocean fault lines were reaching higher points than those measured before the Turkish quakes.

They also noted that, in Japan, at least five major quakes in the Nankaido fault have been accompanied by similar events on the contiguous Toanakai/Tokai segment within five years - and three of the subsequent quakes ruptured in the same years as their precursors.

But there has been little sign of practical advancements in tsunami warning-system technology since December, despite the warnings. The only existing system in the Indian Ocean consists at present of 15 sea-level gauges which are able to pick up on changes in water swells but can produce data only once every hour, clearly inadequate for spotting a tsunami, which can wreak total devastation within minutes or even seconds.

When it is put into action, the warning operation will resemble the NOAA system already existing in the Pacific Ocean, which picked up initial seismic signals from the December earthquake. The system, as envisaged, will be able to pick up on sea movements such as storm surges and tsunamis. Like its counterpart in the Pacific, it is expected to cost several million dollars.

- Independent and Reuters