October 8, 1995
Web posted at: 1:40 p.m. EDT (1740 GMT)
SUNGAI PENUH, Indonesia (CNN) -- Aftershocks continued Sunday on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, where thousands of people were left homeless by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake a day earlier. Authorities report at least 78 deaths and 2,000 injuries. Survivors spent Saturday night in tents outside what was left of their homes. "I don't know what to do. My home has been destroyed and I have no place to go," lamented one woman, who had managed to escape from her crumbling house by jumping through the window.
Most of the casualties from Saturday's quake appeared to have occurred in the villages of Lempur and Tanjung Rawang, wedged between some of the tallest mountains in western Indonesia. Poor road and telephone links hampered early efforts to get food and medicines to affected areas. But officials said several tons of rice and large quantities of quick-cooking noodles were on the way in army trucks.
The Meteorology and Geophysics Office said the quake was centered about 16 kilometers (10 miles) west of Sungai Penuh, near Sumatra's west coast. There are 150,000 people living in the district.
Reports from the remote region indicated that local hospitals were unable to cope with the large number of injured. Military personnel rushed to the disaster areas to help with the rescue.
The town lies at the center of a fertile valley where paddy fields, tea, clove and coffee plantations are surrounded by heavily forested mountains. One of them, Mount Kerinci, is west Indonesia's highest peak at 12,467 feet.
A government geologist said the quake was on the 400-mile Sumatra fault, which runs the length of the island.
In February 1994, more than 215 people were killed in an earthquake at Liwa, located on the fault in western Lampung on Sumatra's southern tip.
Saturday's quake was the largest in Indonesia this year.
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