Earthquake shakes Papua city

SORONG – A powerful earthquake in remote eastern Indonesia has injured more than 60 people, left hundreds of houses damaged and rattled an idyllic island chain popular with foreign tourists and divers.

People were woken and ran from their homes when the magnitude-6.6 undersea quake struck in the Papua region at about 1am local time on Friday, not far from the coastal city of Sorong.

The US Geological Survey said the earthquake’s epicentre was at a depth of 24 kilometres.

Disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said 17 people were so far known to have sustained serious injuries and 45 suffered minor injuries, while 200 houses were damaged. No deaths have been reported.

The quake also caused blackouts in Sorong where patients were evacuated from a hospital.

“We are still collecting data, and we expect the number of victims and damage to increase,” Nugroho said in a statement.

The quake was also felt strongly in Raja Ampat, north-west of the epicentre, an archipelago popular with tourists and divers due to its palm-fringed islands that are surrounded by an underwater kaleidoscope of coral and fish.

Yona Niki, a receptionist at Waisai Beach Hotel on Waigeo island, said staff and four guests staying at the hotel ran outside when the quake hit and waited until the intense shaking had stopped.

The manager of another hotel said the quake left cracks in the walls.

However there were no reports of injuries in the area, with hotel operators saying it was the low season so there were few tourists.

A huge undersea quake in 2004 triggered a tsunami that engulfed Aceh province on western Sumatra island, killing more than 170,000 people in Indonesia and tens of thousands more in other countries with coasts on the Indian Ocean.