Indonesian office workers flee as earthquake shakes capital

People gather outside The City Tower building after an earthquake hit Jakarta, Indonesia, January 23, 2018. (Source: REUTERS)

Office workers fled high-rise buildings in the Indonesian capital on Tuesday after a strong earthquake shook the city, but there were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries. The relatively shallow quake of magnitude 6 struck off the island of Java, the US Geological Survey said, and authorities ruled out the risk of a tsunami.

Many people ran along the streets of downtown Jakarta, pointing at the buildings above them, witnesses said. Metro TV showed patients being evacuated from a hospital.

The quake struck about 104 km (64.62 miles) west of the city of Sukabumi, at a depth of 33 km (21 miles). Jakarta is about 100 km (62 miles) away.

“We felt the earthquake for three to five minutes,” said Rudy Togatorop, 35, who works at the Chilean embassy.

“I was just sitting down, then I felt the building swaying. The emergency stairs were very narrow. I was worried if something would happen.”

Indonesia is regularly hit by earthquakes in one of the world’s most quake-prone regions. In 2004, the Indian Ocean tsunami killed 226,000 people in 13 countries, including more than 120,000 in Indonesia.

In December, a quake of 6.5 magnitude killed at least three people when it hit Java, Indonesia’s most densely populated island, at a depth of 92 km (57 miles), and buildings in Jakarta swayed for several seconds. Tuesday’s quake was at a depth of 44 km (27 miles).

The World Bank reckons natural disasters cost Indonesia 0.3 percent of its GDP annually, but a 2015 report on disaster risk management prepared by Indonesia’s government said a major earthquake, occurring once every 250 years, could cause losses in excess of $30 billion, or 3 percent of GDP.

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