MALANG, Indonesia (AP) – A massive earthquake on Indonesia’s main island of Java killed eight people, including a woman whose motorcycle was hit by falling rocks and damaged more than 1,300 buildings, officials said Sunday. It didn’t cause a tsunami.
The US Geological Survey said the magnitude 6.0 earthquake struck off the island’s south coast at 2 p.m. Saturday. It was located 45 kilometers south of the city of Sumberpucung in Malang District in East Java Province, at a depth of 82 kilometers.
Rahmat Triyono, the head of the earthquake and tsunami center in Indonesia, said the undersea tremblor did not have the potential to cause a tsunami. Still, he urged people to stay away from slopes of soil or rocks that could cause landslides.
This was the second deadly disaster to hit Indonesia this week, after tropical cyclone Seroja triggered a severe downpour on Sunday killing at least 174 people and 48 still missing in East Nusa Tenggara province. Some victims were buried in mudslides or solidified lava from a November volcanic eruption, while others were swept away by flash floods. Thousands of houses with damage.
Saturday’s earthquake caused falling rocks to kill a woman on a motorcycle and seriously injure her husband in East Java’s Lumajang district, Raditya Jati, spokesman for the National Disaster Mitigation Agency.
He said about 1,189 homes and 150 public facilities, including schools, hospitals and government offices, had been damaged. Rescue workers retrieved four bodies from the rubble in Kali Uling village in Lumajang. Three people were also confirmed by the Malang district earthquake.
Television reports showed people running in panic from shopping centers and buildings in various cities in East Java province.
Indonesia, a sprawling archipelago of 270 million people, is regularly hit by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis due to its location on the Ring of Fire, an arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific basin.
In January, a magnitude 6.2 earthquake killed at least 105 people and injured nearly 6,500, while more than 92,000 were displaced after striking Mamuju and Majene districts in West Sulawesi province.
Associated Press writer Niniek Karmini in Jakarta, Indonesia contributed to this report.