Contributor: Paul Jeffery

Office workers evacuated outside their building in Medan, Northern Sumatra, after the first earthquake hit Indonesia today. Photo: Reuters/Y.T Haryono, courtesy the Thomson Reuters Foundation – AlertNet

Updated April 13, 2012: Given the scale of the earthquakes that hit on Wednesday, the damage and impact on lives in West Sumatra's Aceh province has been minimal.

According to scientists, this was one of the biggest slide earthquakes on record — at the fault line, the plates on the ocean floor moved horizontally a massive 70 feet. Because this was a horizontal movement, however, there was no tsunami and only minimal structural damage. It became apparent by Wednesday night and early Thursday morning that a big humanitarian response would likely be unnecessary.

We mobilized former team members on the ground in Banda Aceh and Meulaboh cities to assess the situation. While they saw large populations camped out on higher ground that first night, people have since returned home. The government has reported five deaths from heart attacks caused by shock and six injured in the quake, but they are not requesting any international support. As far as we are aware, there has been no displacement.

Today at 3:38 p.m. local time (1:38 a.m. PST), an 8.6 earthquake hit off the coast of Aceh Province in Sumatra, Indonesia — the same site of the deadly 2004 earthquake that triggered a tsunami killing 230,000 people. While we’ll have a team on the ground tomorrow to carefully assess the needs in the area, reports so far indicate far less damage and no fatalities — thanks in part to emergency preparedness work throughout the country in the eight years since the earlier tragedy.

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A verdant landscape in rural Timor-Leste (East Timor) with traditional buildings, horses and mountains. Photo: Paul Jeffery/Mercy Corps

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