UN Monitors Northern Indonesia after Strong Earthquake Rattles Aceh Province
New York, Jul 2 2013 - The United Nations emergency relief arm is coordinating with local authorities and agencies to
monitor the northern tip of Sumatra Island after a strong earthquake rocked Indonesia's Aceh province.
"The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says that an earthquake of magnitude 6.2 struck," UN
spokesperson for the Secretary-General, Eduardo del Buey told journalists in New York.
The national disaster authorities have confirmed 2 dead and some 150 injured in the Bener
Meriah and Aceh Tengga districts, Mr. del Buey said.
Earlier this year, Indonesia and the other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) participated in
a roundtable on building resilience to natural disasters and major economic crises.
The roundtable was guided by a new ESCAP study which found that multiple shocks are occurring with increased frequency
and are converging in new ways.
At the forum, Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson issued an urgent call to protect the poor and vulnerable during
natural disasters and economic crises.
"We definitely need to make disaster risk reduction part of the development paradigm and the post 2015 development
agenda and reach out to the private sector, civil society, academia and the scientific world," he said.
In April of 2012, an 8.6-magnitude earthquake struck 437 kilometres off the coast of Sumatra causing at least eight
countries to issue tsunami alerts. The moves were praised by OCHA for their level of preparedness and early warning
systems
At the time, evacuation orders were issued for coastal areas at risk in Indonesia followed by Thailand, Sri Lanka, India
and Myanmar. Two hours later an 8.2-magnitude aftershock triggered a second wave of tsunami warnings across the region.
In the eight years since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed more than 226,000 people following a 9.1-magnitude
earthquake, affected countries such as Indonesia, Thailand, India and Sri Lanka have invested heavily in disaster
response capacity and early warning systems.
For more details go to UN News Centre at http://www.un.org/news
ENDS