Contact: Trihadi Saptoadi, WV Indonesia Director, +62-8159802874 cell; Jimmy Nadapdap, WV Indonesia HEA Manager, +62-818471074 cell; Hendro Suwito, WV Indonesia Communications Manager, +62-811997762 cell

MEDIA ADVISORY, Sept. 13 /Standard Newswire/ -- World Vision Indonesia relief teams are due to leave today (Thursday) to assess the impact of a series of massive quakes that rocked Sumatra west coast and which resulted in tsunami warnings being issued across the Indian ocean.

The largest quake on Wednesday night at 6.10 p.m. (GMT+7) measured some 8.4 on the USG scale and was followed by others measuring up to 7.8. All occurred off the Bengkulu coast on the western side of Sumatra.

Up to 9.45 a.m. today (Thursday), media reports in Indonesia said scores of people were injured with casualty figures likely to rise, although phone connections were largely intact which meant that the authorities had a pretty good idea of impact.

Several towns along the western coast of Bengkulu and West Sumatra province, the closest to the epicenters, reported houses collapsed or scores of buildings partly destroyed or suffering from cracks. Electricity in many parts of Sumatra was down since the quake, as power stations had broken down.

WV Indonesia Director National Director, Trihadi Saptoadi, said: "We are sending assessment teams to Bengkulu and West Sumatra today. We hope they will be able to provide us with rapid assessment reports on the pressing needs on the ground."

WV Indonesia Humanitarian and Emergencies Assessment manager, Jimmy Nadapdap, said two relief staff would go to Bengkulu and another two staff to Padang in West Sumatra. The four staff are experienced relief operatives having handled previous emergency responses, including the 2004 Asian tsunami.

The team for Padang will fly this afternoon. The one heading for Bengkulu will take a car and ferry to Sumatra. That journey could take a minimum 12 hours.

Jimmy said: "So far, the real impact of the quakes is unclear. We are receiving media reports from the city of Bengkulu, Padang and Jambi. But we are unsure about what conditions are like in the remote regions there. The assessment team will provide us with more information, enabling us to make an appropriate response."

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has instructed his cabinet to provide emergency aid. A medical team was being dispatched to Bengkulu today to support the local hospitals.

The quakes were felt as far away as Singapore and Malaysia, where many people rushed to safer places from their apartment buildings.

Several quakes, measuring between five and six in magnitude, rocked the Indonesian archipelago yesterday, including in Papua, Timor and Jambi provinces. They were overshadowed by the massive tremor in Bengkulu and its scores of aftershocks.

WV Indonesia has no project close to the impacted areas. The nearest projects are in Jakarta (some 600 kilometers east of the epicenter) and in Nias island and Aceh province (over 600 kilometers away northwest of the quakes).

Indonesia: A history of quakes:

17 July 2006: A 7.7 magnitude undersea earthquake triggers a tsunami that strikes a 200km (125-mile) stretch of the southern coast of Java, killing more than 650 people on the Indonesian island.

27 May 2006: Nearly 5,000 people die when a magnitude 6.2 quake hits the Indonesian island of Java, devastating the city of Yogyakarta and surrounding areas.

28 March 2005: About 1,300 people are killed in an 8.7 magnitude quake off the coast of the Indonesian island of Nias, west of Sumatra.

26 December 2004: Some 230,000 are killed across Asia when an earthquake measuring 8.9 triggers sea surges that spread across the region. 167,000 people are estimated to have died in Indonesia with half a million people displaced.