Powerful 6.6 Quake Hits Indonesia’s Sumatra Amid Devastating Floods And Landslides
Deadly cyclone, landslides, and now earthquake batter Indonesia’s north.
A formidable 6.6 magnitude earthquake struck the western extremity of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island on Thursday morning, its epicentre located just 34 kilometres northwest of Simeulue Island at a shallow depth of 25 kilometres, sending powerful tremors across northern Aceh and beyond at precisely 11:56 local time, as confirmed by the United States Geological Survey and Indonesia’s Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency.
While initial assessments reported no significant structural damage or casualties from the quake itself, and both the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre and Indian Ocean monitoring systems explicitly ruled out any tsunami risk, the seismic event has further strained an already overwhelmed disaster-response apparatus in a region currently battling one of its worst flood-and-landslide crises in years.
The earthquake arrived less than 24 hours after the rare Tropical Cyclone Senyar, an unusual meteorological phenomenon for the Malacca Strait region, slammed into northeastern Sumatra on Wednesday evening, triggering extreme rainfall that has caused catastrophic flash floods and massive landslides across North Sumatra province, claiming at least 23 lives, leaving more than two dozen people missing, and submerging entire villages under metres of mud and debris.
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Rescue operations remain severely hampered by total road cut-offs, severed telecommunication lines, and collapsed bridges in the worst-affected districts of Sibolga, Central Tapanuli, and surrounding regencies, forcing the National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas) to deploy helicopters for evacuations and to air-drop essential supplies to over 8,000 displaced residents now sheltering in makeshift camps and public buildings.
With the Indonesian Meteorological Agency issuing red alerts for persistent extreme rainfall across Aceh, West Sumatra, and Riau provinces through the weekend, authorities fear a dramatic escalation in casualties and damage, as saturated hillsides become increasingly prone to fresh landslides and swollen rivers threaten to breach embankments, compounding the suffering of communities still reeling from the combined onslaught of cyclone, floods, and now a significant earthquake.
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