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Intense search, rescue efforts underway after powerful quake rocks west Indonesia

2022-11-23 11:09:11Xinhua Editor : Li Yan ECNS App Download

Dozens of local people on Tuesday morning gathered at the site of a landslide in the district of Cianjur in West Java province of Indonesia's Java island, looking frantically at an excavator removing soil that had buried a boarding school and nearly 40 houses.

The excavator operator was working desperately to make way for rescue teams and volunteers to search for residents who were reportedly trapped underneath.

The landslide was triggered by a 5.6-magnitude earthquake that hit the Cianjur region on Monday afternoon. The powerful quake was felt as far away as Jakarta, located about 150 kilometers from Cianjur.

Among the people at the site of the landslide was Tahib, who had spent seven hours traveling from Tangerang, a satellite city of the Indonesian capital city of Jakarta, to come to Cianjur to search for his 40-year-old sister who was trapped under the landslide, along with her husband and two children aged 25 and 20 years old.

"I pray the rescue team can find them soon," a panic-struck Tahib told Xinhua.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the death toll had reached 268, with 151 others still missing, according to the latest data given by the head of the national disaster management agency Suharyanto at a press conference.

West Java Governor Ridwan Kamil said most of the victims were children who were studying in school buildings buried by the earthquake-triggered landslide.

The quake also damaged 22,198 houses and five healthcare facilities, including a regional hospital, and has forced more than 58,000 survivors to live in refugee tents provided by the government and volunteers.

One of the survivors, Tatang, a 60-year-old English teacher at a vocational school in the region said he was having a meeting with 21 other teachers on the second floor of the school when the earthquake struck.

A traumatized Tatang said he heard ambulances every 10 minutes and that he'd been terrified.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo came to Cianjur on Tuesday afternoon to check the post-disaster management process, including to ensure the roads covered by the landslide could be cleared to accelerate the distribution of aid to the survivors.

Citing the Indonesia's Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency's (BMKG) assessment that such an earthquake could happen once every 20 years, Widodo has told the Ministry of Public Works and Public Housing to rebuild the damaged houses, buildings and other facilities in accordance with the earthquake-resistant standards.

The quake struck at 1:21 p.m. local time (0621 GMT) on Monday, with the epicenter located 10 km southwest of the district of Cianjur in West Java province.

The temblor occurred at a depth of 10 km, the BMKG said.

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