Last Earthquake in West Sumatera

Earthquake something common has occurred in Padang, West Sumatera, since I was a little girl. Just like the earthquake for Japanese. At that time, we had known ideas or knowledge of what a tsunami was or how to rescue ourselves if it came. My parents home was less 1 kilometer from the beach. Earthquake was just an earthquake for us. If it has occurred, we went out of the building, waited after it was over and then continued our activities just like it never happened. End of story.

Me and my children has been in Padang for holidays and we felt how powerful the  last 27 October earthquake was. There was a hard rain when the earthquake happened, around 10 PM. I was reading a bed-time story for Attar and Puan.

It was 7.7 -magnitude quake. A 13-foot tsunami that swept away homes, killing at least 431 people in Mentawai Island, West Sumatera and hundreds of people are still missing till present.

Last year on 30 September, when a powerful earthquake struck off the West Sumatra coast in Indonesia, measuring 7.9 -magnitude quake; me, my husband and the children were also in Padang for holiday. It was followed by another two deadly earthquakes which triggered landslides. The earthquakes left a trail of destruction and caused the death of at least 1,117 people and severely injured another 1,214 people. No tsunami  was occurred that time.

So, if I compared between those two earthquakes, the last year was harder than the last  one. We got shocked when found out that there were tsunami occurred in Mentawai Island. Yes, there  a rumor spread among the West Sumatera people that there will be a very powerful earthquake coming soon, but we can not live in fear just because of that reason. What we have to do is always being alert because we do not have knowledge to predict when or how the disaster will coming through us.

Thanks to God because all of my whole family are safe. My parent's new home is about 5 kilometer from the beach, so it was became a shelter for other relative who live near beach. Attar and Puan had no traumatic memory of those earthquake. So, I do hope in the next future we will be prepared to deal with the natural disaster like earthquake and tsunami to minimal the effects. We live in Indonesia which has thousand of islands and the longest beach lines in this world. Please Pray for Indonesia.

-Amelia -