Strong Quakes, Tsunami Hit Along Indonesia's Western Sulawesi Island

Updated at 3:14 p.m. ET

Powerful earthquakes struck along the western coast of the Indonesian island of Sulawesi on Friday, triggering a tsunami that reportedly caused damage in two cities.

The U.S. Geological Survey said a 7.5 magnitude quake just six miles deep hit a sparsely populated area in the early evening. The epicenter was about 50 miles north of Palu.

The strong quake followed a milder 6.1 magnitude temblor hours earlier in the same area. That temblor destroyed some houses, killing at least one person and injuring about 10 others, Reuters reports.

More than a dozen other earthquakes with a magnitude of at least 5.0 hit the same area of Sulawesi over the course of several hours, the USGS said.

Indonesia's Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) initially announced that the largest quake was "not capable of generating a tsunami affecting the Indian Ocean region." However, agency chief Dwikorita Karnawati later told Reuters that a tsunami had struck the city of Palu, located on the Makassar Strait, which connects the Celebes and Java seas.

"The 1.5- to 2-meter [6 1/2-foot] tsunami has receded," Karnawati told the news service. "The situation is chaotic, people are running on the streets and buildings collapsed. There is a ship washed ashore."

An official of the Central Sulawesi Museum in Palu told The Jakarta Post, "Yes, there was a smashing of seawater." Then, the newspaper reported, the phone connection "broke down."

National Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said the city of Donggala was also hit by the tsunami, The Associated Press reported.

"The cut to telecommunications and darkness are hampering efforts to obtain information," he said, according to the AP. "All national potential will be deployed, and tomorrow morning we will deploy Hercules and helicopters to provide assistance in tsunami-affected areas."

Indonesian officials said it wasn't immediately clear whether there were fatalities from the tsunami.

The devastating South Asian tsunami in 2004 brought waves that witnesses in Aceh Province, Indonesia, said were 50 to 70 feet tall, NPR reported.

As NPR's Mark Memmott has noted, "an estimated 230,000 people died after an earthquake triggered a massive tsunami that devastated South Asian coasts from Indonesia to Thailand, Sri Lanka and India."

In August, dozens of people were killed in an earthquake that struck Indonesia's Lombok island.

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