Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Back-to-back Earthquakes in Oceania

A bad day, to say the least.

Reports are now being confirmed in detail from the region of the Samoas and Tonga stating that over 100 people are feared dead after an 8.0 magnitude earthquake hit southwest of American Samoa and then a tsunami smashed everything along the various islands coastlines.

Far to the west, across Indonesia and many hours later, a 7.9 magnitude earthquake hit off the coast of the island of Sumatra, collapsing buildings over a wide area. It looks very bad...
Rustam Pakaya, the head of the health ministry's disaster centre, said via a telephone text message that a hospital in Padang in the area near the epicentre of the quake had also collapsed.

"Jamil hospital collapsed and thousands of people are trapped in the rubble of buildings," Pakaya said.
Coming just days after the Philippines floods and now the same storm system hitting Viet Nam, this is going to be a very taxing time for relief efforts.