A second earthquake in under 24 hours, measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale, shook southern Sumatra in Indonesia Thursday morning 1 October. Sumatrans were still recovering from the earlier, stronger earthquake in the port of Padang which has left at least 400 dead and many people trapped under collapsed buildings. The death toll could climb into the thousands, officials fear.
The earthquakes come days after a strong tremor shook the Pacific islands of Samoa, leaving many villages flattened and over 100 people dead. Experts say that the earthquakes are all on the edge of the Australian tectonic plate where it comes into contact with the Eurasian plate, in the case of the Sumatra earthquakes, and where it bumps up against the Pacific plate in the case of the Samoa earthquake. BBC, CNN, Reuters
This work by genevalunch.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported.
News story, GenevaLunch, 1 October 2009.
Filed under: World news
Tags: Australia, Eurasia, Indonesia, Pacific islands, Padang Indonesia, Samoa, Sumatra, tectonic
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October 5th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Hi
The British Red Cross have launched the Asia Pacific Disasters Appeal to respond to the earthquakes in Indonesia, as well as the tsunami in Sumatra and typhoon in south-east Asia. They are urgently looking for donations to help support Red Cross emergency response operations across the region.All the info is at:
http://www.redcross.org.uk/asiapacificappeal
Thanks
Alex
October 5th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Thanks for this. Our Geneva readers might like to be aware that the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has also launched an appeal for CHF8 million in urgent aid to help various national societies as they try to cope with the numerous recent natural disasters in Asia.