Earthquake in Padang Indonesia

(From BBC news)

At least 529 people are now known to have died in a powerful quake that struck the Indonesian island of Sumatra on Wednesday, the government says.

Rescuers struggled on Thursday to find survivors in the rubble of hundreds of collapsed buildings.

More than 400 people have been seriously injured, and the death toll is expected to rise, officials say.

The 7.6-magnitude quake struck close to the city of Padang, the capital of West Sumatra province.

The earthquake brought down hospitals, schools and shopping malls, cut power lines and triggered landslides.

The social affairs ministry gave the latest confirmed death toll of 529, but Rustam Pakaya, head of the health ministry's disaster centre in Jakarta, said: "Our prediction is that thousands have died."

A second quake of 6.8 struck close to Padang at 0852 local time (0152 GMT) on Thursday but there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.

The first earthquake struck at 1716 local time (1016 GMT) on Wednesday, some 85km (55 miles) under the sea, north-west of Padang, the US Geological Survey said.

The GCP event was set for an 8 hour period beginning at 09:00 GMT to include somewhat more than an hour prior to the main temblor. The result is Chisquare 29114.002 on 28800 df for p = 0.096 and Z = 1.306. The graph shows a quite steady deviation over the 7 hours beginning at the time of the quake.

Earthquake in
Padang IndonesiEarquake in Padang Indonesia

It is important to keep in mind that we have only a tiny statistical effect, so that it is always hard to distinguish signal from noise. This means that every "success" might be largely driven by chance, and every "null" might include a real signal overwhelmed by noise. In the long run, a real effect can be identified only by patiently accumulating replications of similar analyses.


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