Indonesia’s earthquake death toll from last month now reached 602 people killed by collapsed buildings and landslides
The shallow 5.6-magnitude earthquake hit the town of Cianjur in Indonesia’s most populous province West Java on November 21, with most of the victims killed as buildings collapsed or landslides were triggered.
The number of people killed by Indonesia’s earthquake last month’s earthquake in the Indonesian province of West Java has been confirmed at 602 after final tabulation, the Cianjur county government said on Friday. A 5.6 magnitude earthquake hit West Java’s Cianjur on November 21.
The preliminary death toll was estimated at 334 in late November. “I have received complete data on casualties from 13 sub-districts. The death toll from the recent quake, based on names and addresses, has reached 602,” Cianjur District Head Herman Suherman was quoted as saying by the Indonesian news agency Antara. The official added that 397 of the 602 dead were found in the Cugenang sub-district, some of them killed by the debris from over 40,000 buildings damaged as a result of the earthquake. Indonesia is located in a seismically active zone and regularly suffers from powerful earthquakes.
National disaster mitigation agency spokesman Abdul Muhari told AFP it was still sticking with a lower death toll of 335 but was working to verify the new figure.
“Because they were immediately buried and were not reported, their names were not included in the missing people list,” he said.”The district head said they already have the data, regardless we still need to verify.”
To claim government aid, relatives must remove victims from their family registry and receive a death certificate from local authorities, he said.
The tremor was the deadliest in the archipelago nation since a 2018 quake and the tsunami killed more than 4,000 people on the island of Sulawesi.
Many were found buried under rubble in the days following the quake, with only several successful rescues reported, including an operation to free a six-year-old boy that was described as a “miracle” by emergency workers.
The quake damaged more than 62,000 houses and forced more than 73,000 people to evacuate to at least 325 shelters, officials said.
Indonesia experiences frequent seismic and volcanic activity due to its position on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, where tectonic plates collide.
A 6.2-magnitude quake that shook Sulawesi Island in January 2021 killed more than 100 people and left thousands homeless.
Indonesia
Indonesia, Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guinea. Indonesia is the world’s largest archipelagic state and the 14th-largest country by area, at 1,904,569 square kilometers (735,358 square miles). With over 275 million people, Indonesia is the world’s fourth-most populous country and the most populous Muslim-majority country. Java, the world’s most populous island, is home to more than half of the country’s population.
