One dies and 17 injured in West Java earthquake

JAKARTA (JP): One person died, 17 others were injured and 160 houses were damaged after a strong quake jolted West Java on Tuesday, an official at the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency said on Wednesday.

"All the victims were residents of the Panimbang district in the Pandeglang regency of West Java," the Agency spokesman Waan Tarmin said.

Tarmin did not provide details of the incidents.

The Panimbang district is located some 100 kilometers away from the quake's epicenter in the Indian Ocean. The epicenter was located some 200 kilometers southwest of Jakarta.

Tarmin said other neighboring districts heavily jolted by the quake were Sumyur, Cibaliung and Pagelaran districts. All are also located in the same regency.

Tarmin said fatalities had yet to be reported in the last three districts.

"The regency's administration is still collecting data of other victims of the calamity and also the total losses caused by the quake," he told The Jakarta Post at his office.

No officials of the Pandeglang regency's administration were available for comment on Wednesday.

The earthquake, which was recorded at 6.0 on the open-ended Richter scale, occurred at 9.14 p.m, he said.

"The agency recorded a string of 54 aftershocks for about 12 hours after the first strong one," said Tarmin.

He said the string of aftershocks could not be sensed by people, only by a seismograph.

A staffer at the National Earthquake Center said there were no means capable of predicting when the next strong quake would occur.

"Such a device has yet to be invented. But, after the strong one, the intensity of the tremors continuously decreases," Fauzi, a staffer at the center, said on Wednesday.

Fauzi said the epicenter of Tuesday's quake was 33 kilometers under sea level.

A scientist at the Bandung-based Center for Geological Research and Development supported Fauzi's opinion.

"If the epicenter of the quake was shallow, or close to the surface of the sea, the damage suffered by people would be more serious," said Engkon Kertapati at his office in Bandung, West Java on Wednesday.

Residents of Jakarta were also shocked by the quake.

Karsul, a maintenance staffer of the BRI building on Jl. Sudirman said he was standing in a lift on the 19th floor of the building when the quake struck.

"The lift shook heavily, but it still worked. Thank God the lift continued to the building's basement," he told the Post shortly after the quake.

Joko Purnomo, head of the building's maintenance unit, said the building was constructed to be quake resistant.

"The building was built between 1984 and 1985. It has become a model for other buildings in Jakarta for its quake-resistant system," said Joko.

Fauzi said the tremor felt by residents of Jakarta was measured at IV to VI on the scale of Modified Mercally Intensity (MMI) which has a total of nine scales.

"The MMI measures the strength of a quake felt by people where they are standing at the moment the quake occurs," said Fauzi.

If the scale hit VIII to IX, all city's building would have been destroyed, he said. (asa/43)