MALANG, Indonesia (AP) – Eight people have been killed in a powerful earthquake on Indonesia’s mainland Java, including a woman whose motorcycle was hit by false rocks and damaged more than 1,300 buildings, officials said on Sunday. It did not cause a tsunami.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake, with a magnitude of 6.0, struck off the island’s south coast at 2 p.m. It was 45 kilometers (28 miles) south of the city of Sumberpucung, Malang district in the province of East Java, at a depth of 82 kilometers (51 miles).
Rahmat Triyono, head of the earthquake and tsunami center in Indonesia, said the underwater quake did not have the potential to cause a tsunami. Still, he encouraged people to stay away from sloping ground or rocks that could cause landslides.
It was the second deadly disaster to hit Indonesia this week, after tropical cyclone Seroja caused a severe downpour on Sunday in which at least 174 people were killed and 48 still missing in the eastern Nusa Tenggara province. Some victims were buried in a mudslide or solidified lava in November due to a volcanic eruption, while others were swept away by flash floods. Thousands of homes with damaged.
Saturday’s earthquake caused false rocks to kill a woman on a motorcycle and seriously injured her husband in the Lumajang district of East Java, said Raditya Jati, spokeswoman for the National Disaster Management Agency.
He said about 1,189 homes and 150 public facilities, including schools, hospitals and government offices, were damaged. Rescuers recovered four bodies from the rubble in the town of Kali Uling in Lumajang. Three people were also killed by the earthquake in Malang district.
According to television reports, people are running in panic from shopping malls and buildings in several cities in the province of East Java.
Indonesia, a vast island group 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, at least 105 people died in an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.2 and injured nearly 6,500, while more than 92,000 were displaced after hitting the districts of Mamuju and Majene in the province of Western Sulawesi.
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Associated Press author Niniek Karmini in Jakarta, Indonesia, contributed to this report.