JAKARTA, Indonesia — A powerful earthquake struck western Indonesia on Wednesday, triggering landslides and trapping thousands under collapsed buildings — including two hospitals, an official said.
At least 200 people were killed in Padang, a coastal city of 900,000 on Sumatra island, and government officials expected the toll to climb.
The 7.6-magnitude quake started fires, severed roads and cut off power and communications to Padang. Thousands fled in panic, fearing a tsunami.
Buildings swayed hundreds of miles away in neighboring Malaysia and Singapore.
In the sprawling low-lying city of Padang, the shaking was so intense that people crouched or sat on the street to avoid falling.
An exodus of thousands tried to get away from the coast in cars and motorbikes.
The quake hit at 5:15 p.m. local time (4:15 a.m. MDT), just off the coast of Padang, the U.S. Geological Survey reported. It occurred a day after a killer tsunami hit islands in the South Pacific but was not connected with it, experts said. It was along the same fault line that spawned the 2004 Asian tsunami that killed 230,000 people in 11 nations.
A tsunami warning was issued Wednesday for countries along the Indian Ocean but was lifted after about an hour. There were no reports of giant waves.
The temblor flattened buildings and felled trees in Padang, damaged mosques and hotels and crushed cars. In the gathering darkness shortly after the quake, residents fought some fires with buckets of water and used their bare hands to search for survivors, pulling at the wreckage and tossing it away piece by piece.
“People ran to high ground. Houses and buildings were badly damaged,” said Kasmiati, who lives on the coast near the quake’s epicenter.
