• 7.6-magnitude quake, followed by 7.0 tremor
• 464 dead, thousands trapped under rubble
• Hospitals, hotels, shopping malls cave in
• Capuchin Martinus Situmorang is bishop of Padang
The official death toll from the Indonesian earthquake on September 30th has risen to 464, the social affairs ministry says.
The latest update follows the Indonesian Health Ministry's prediction that thousands of people were likely killed in the 7.6-magnitude earthquake that struck Indonesia's Sumatra on Wednesday.
A second earthquake was recorded shortly before noon (AEST) on October 1st. It had a magnitude of 7.0 and struck 150km south of the epicenter of last night's quake.
Five hundred buildings in Padang, located on the western coast of Sumatra, collapsed or were badly damaged, Disaster Management Agency spokesman Priyadi Kardono said.
Earlier today, Disaster Management Agency spokesman Priyadi Kardono said: "The effects of the earthquake could be as big as the Yogyakarta quake." He was referring to a 2006 quake that killed nearly 6000. The tragedy comes just a day after an earthquake and tsunami hit Samoa and American Samoa, killing 148 people
The bishop of Padang is Mgr. Martinus Situmorang OFMCap. He attended the annual meeting of bishops of Sumatra at Pematangsiantar together with the three Capuchin provincial when the earthquake hit his diocese. He went back to Padang. The Capuchin provincial of Medan wrote, that in the moment they have no additional information.
The Capuchins in Medan and Sumatra have been involved in first aid and reconstruction work after the Tsunami of 2004 and the earthquake at Nias Island in 2005.
