2007-03-14T08:06:00.000-07:00

Sumatra earthquake -news reports

I have been looking in the news to see how the situation in Sumatra have been reported upon. Firstly I looked at how the number of deaths by the earthquake have fluctuated:
AFP was early reporting at least 70 dead on March 6:th

JAKARTA, March 6, 2007 (AFP) - At least 70 people were killed Tuesday in a 6.3-magnitude earthquake that rocked Indonesia's Sumatra island, a spokesman for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said.

Acording to Jakarta post the number of people killed by the earthquake was 58

JAKARTA (Agencies): A powerful earthquake flattened hundreds of buildings in West Sumatra Tuesday, killing at least 58 people and leaving hospitals grappling with scores of injured, officials and media reports said.

Then, on March 7:th, Reuters reports 72 confirmed dead

The disaster management agency in West Sumatra province, where the 6.4 magnitude quake and another measuring 6.3 were centred, put the confirmed death figure at 72.

Then a happy note AFP reports that the number of confirmed dead is only 52

At least 52 people were killed by the strong earthquake that shook the Indonesian island of Sumatra, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's spokesman said Wednesday, revising down an earlier toll.

Acording to this article Antara news agency (Indonesian news agency) should have reported earlier as many as 88 fatalities. But I have not been able to find this news article myself.

Then on the 8:th March Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA) reports:

West Sumatra's disaster management agency said 85 people were killed by Tuesday's two quakes, which were also felt in neighboring Singapore and Malaysia, but hundreds more were injured and thousands spent a night in open fields, frightened that further tremors would hit.

Reuters reports on March 9:

An official at the National Coordinating Agency for Disaster Management in Jakarta said on Friday the quakes killed 72 people and seriously injured 504.

What this shows is that it is sometimes hard to get information about how many people have been killed or injured by an earthquake, especially since most communication broke down due to the quake.

Another note:
There have been reports about that there have been increased activity from the volcanoes located near the epicenter, but in the news it said that one of the volcanoes was Merapi. Merapi is as you know the volcano located near Yogyakarta, Java and did get increased activity due to an earthquake, but not this one, rather the one inn May last year. The volcano near the epicenter is named Marapi. It was interesting to see how quickly this misinformation spread threw newsagents all over the world.

I also asked some of my friends living in Indonesia today how many was killed and got all different answers:
- 50 official other information 70...
- 73 (from March 9)
- 67 killed (according to Kompas - big newspaper in Jakarta)

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Earthquake

Sumatra earthquake -news reports