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Strong quake shakes India's tsunami-hit islands

Posted on: Sunday, 24 July 2005, 13:20 CDT

PORT BLAIR, India (Reuters) - India's Andaman and Nicobar islands, devastated by last year's tsunami, were shaken by a strong quake on Sunday but a senior official said he saw no danger of new killer waves hitting the Indian Ocean archipelago.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said the quake hit the area off India's eastern coast at 1542 GMT measuring 7.0, and initially urged authorities near its epicenter to be aware of the risk of local tsunamis.

But it also said on its web site that they could assume the danger had passed if no tsunamis had been observed within an hour of the tremor.

"We have got reports from all inhabited islands through the police and there has been no casualties or damage," the island chain's federal top administrator Ram Kapse told Reuters, speaking over an hour after the tremor.

"There has been no tsunami alert," he said.

Sunday's earthquake came seven months after the Dec. 26 tsunami, triggered by a 9.15 magnitude earthquake. Some 227,000 are dead or missing after the December tsunami.

Thailand issued a tsunami alert and ordered thousands of people living along the Andaman Sea coastline to evacuate after the quake, which hit about 1,110 km (690 miles) southwest of Bangkok.

"There is a possibility that a tsunami can happen. Start the alert and evacuation," Plodprasob Surasawadee, head of the National Disaster Warning Center, said in a message broadcast on all television networks.

The warning was issued for six southern provinces hit by last year's tsunami, including the tourist island of Phuket and Phang Nga, Krabi and Satun provinces.

"TSUNAMI POSSIBLE"

In Indonesia's Aceh, further to the south of the region where the quake struck and the area worst hit by massive waves on Dec. 26, an official said there was a possibility of a tsunami reaching the province.

"I have called radio, police and local government about this so they can warn residents to be careful, but I don't know whether this information has gone to the public or not," said Syahnan, head of the meteorology and geophysics agency in Aceh.

"Although it would be coming from a far location, there is still a possibility (a tsunami) will reach here."

Residents in Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra island said they felt the quake, but there appeared to be little panic. Since Dec. 26, countless aftershocks have struck Aceh.

The Indian government has said around 3,000 people died on the Andaman and Nicobar islands in last year's tsunami.

The Andaman and Nicobar islands are situated on an undersea faultline that continues to Indonesia to the south. The more than 550 islands in the remote Indian Ocean archipelago have experienced hundreds of aftershocks since December.

In the capital Port Blair, hundreds of people ran out of their homes in panic and rushed to open places after Sunday's quake.

"The quake was felt in all the islands of the Andaman and Nicobar chain," a police official told Reuters.

Source: REUTERS

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