Tsunami waves hit the northern coastal areas of Papua on Friday evening, destroying a number of buildings and a bridge, but no fatalities were reported.
The tsunami waves hit Tobati village in Youtefa Bay, Papua, at around 9.30 p.m.
“A number of homes and a bridge in Tobati village are badly damaged, some have even been completely destroyed by the tsunami waves last night,” Tobati church congregation secretary Marcelino Hababuk said Saturday morning.
“The settlement and the bridge in Tobati suffered the most damage from the tsunami attack,” he added, as quoted by kompas.com.
Marcelino said the villagers fled to the local church situated on top of a hill upon hearing news that a tsunami was coming toward Jayapura, the capital of Papua.
“We saw waves rise up and then down three times, starting from around 8.30 p.m., and they hit and damaged houses and the village bridge.”
The neighboring village of Enggros suffered even more damage from the tsunami, which swept all buildings in the village away, Marcelino added.
Papua was among three Indonesian regions that received tsunami warnings on Friday afternoon, along with North Maluku and North Sulawesi, after a 8.9 magnitude earthquake in Japan triggered a massive tsunami that is believed to have killed more than1,000 people in northeastern Japan.