Presi Mandari, Bengkulu – Huge aftershocks rumbled across Indonesia's Sumatra island on Thursday but officials said damage from a massive quake that killed 10 people was not as bad as first feared.
As another powerful quake struck a few thousand kilometres (miles) away, authorities sought to ferry aid supplies to villages and outlying areas where scores of homes were flattened.
But it appeared the country had been spared the scale of devastation first feared when the 8.4-magnitude quake struck at dusk Wednesday – welcome news for terrified residents who had spent the night outdoors.
Officials however warned the death toll could still rise. In many places, telephone lines and electricity were down, and emergency teams were racing to remote areas to assess the extent of casualties and damage.
The quake was strong enough to shake buildings in Thailand and Malaysia and triggered a tsunami alert as far away as East Africa, raising memories of the December 2004 catastrophe that killed 220,000 people.
It struck on the eve of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and was followed Thursday by dozens of aftershocks and several tsunami warnings.
Meanwhile another quake hit the northern tip of Sulawesi on Thursday with a magnitude of 6.2, according to the US Geological Survey, some 2,700 kilometres (1,690 miles) to the east of the Sumatra epicentre. It prompted another tsunami warning, but there were no initial reports of damage and the alert was later lifted.
Vice President Jusuf Kalla expressed his relief at the lack of damage from Wednesday's quake. "Yesterday we expected massive destruction. But from the reports coming in this morning we are grateful that the damage is not as big as we thought," he told a press briefing.
Many residents said it was a miracle there had been so few casualties.
Officials in Bengkulu, closest to the epicentre of Wednesday's undersea quake, said six people had been killed in the area. Four were killed elsewhere, while dozens more were injured.
"It's a miracle that nobody in this village was killed," said 42-year-old Mukhtar, a resident of the nearby village of Kota Agung where scores of homes collapsed.
Many people said they believed they had survived because they rushed out of their homes as soon as they felt the ground rocking.
But Hartini, 35, said her family now had nothing left. "I rushed out of my house as I felt a soft shaking," she added. "But then the shaking grew stronger and stronger, and in seconds, in minutes, my house collapsed. It was completely flattened.
"I'm already a poor person and with this tragedy I'm becoming poorer," she said. "I don't know what to do."
More than 130 buildings or homes collapsed in the quake while nearly 4,000 other were seriously or partially damaged across Bengkulu, a provincial official at the disaster control centre said.
Bengkulu's provincial police chief said the priority now was guarding homes left empty by their owners and cleaning up damaged mosques to enable evening Ramadan prayers to be held.
Hundreds of kilometres away from the epicentre in Medan, Indonesia's third-largest city in North Sumatra, blackouts made the faithful pray Wednesday by candlelight, kerosene lamps and light bulbs rigged to car batteries.
Meanwhile Indonesian ministers rushed in to see what rescue and relief efforts were needed. In Jakarta, relief aid was being loaded onto aircraft including tonnes of food and medicine, an ambulance, generators and other supplies.
Most of the houses which toppled were thought to be on South Pagai island, where authorities could not immediately be reached. Houses there are typically made of light materials, which would reduce casualties.
The quake was powerful enough to slosh the water out of swimming pools in Jakarta, hundreds of kilometres away, and scare workers out of their high-rise towers in Malaysia.
In Bangladesh, hundreds of thousands of people on the coast ran for higher ground after a tsunami warning there.
Indonesia sits on the volatile "Ring of Fire", a massive zone of volcanic instability that encircles the Pacific.