Barely a day after a tsunami struck the Pacific island nations of American and Western Samoa, a tsunami warning was issued after an earthquake struck off the coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
According to press agency
Reuters, the quake hit the coastal city of Padang and had a magnitude of 7.9 on the Richter Scale. The earthquake damaged houses, brought down bridges and started fires. No casualties have been reported so far.
The quake was felt as far as 440 km away. In Singapore, for instance, various high-rise buildings were evacuated.
A regional tsunami warning was promptly issued for Thailand, India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Malaysia.
Indonesia's island of Sumatra is situated right on the "
Pacific Ring of Fire", a belt of intense seismic (earthquake) and volcanic activity. It stretches from New Zealand, along the eastern edge of Asia, north across the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, and south along the coast of North and South America.
In 2004, an earthquake with a magnitude of 9.15 on the Richter Scale struck roughly 600 km from Padang and caused a massive Tsunami that killed 232.000 people in Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, and other nations across the Indian Ocean.
The latest tsunami warning comes barely 24 hours after a massive tidal wave caused havoc and despair in
Samoa, where over 100 people have been reported dead so far.
