LATEST UPDATE FROM AFP NEWS AGENCY: Indian Ocean on tsunami watch after Sumatra quake:
US center WASHINGTON, April 11, 2012 (AFP) - US monitors issued an Indian Ocean-wide tsunami watch following a massive earthquake off the coast of Sumatra Wednesday but said it appeared to have only generated small waves.
Victor Sardina, a geophysicist with the US Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii, told... AFP the tsunami was "not anywhere near" as large as the devastating tsunamis that struck Asia in 2004 and Japan last year.
He said the tsunami measured a mere 35 centimeters (14 inches) near Padang, Indonesia, but could swell to as high as a meter (three feet) near Sri Lanka, adding that US scientists were still carefully monitoring the situation.
Earlier, the center said "earthquakes of this size have the potential to generate a widespread destructive tsunami" but that it was not yet clear if such a tsunami had actually been generated.
The US Geological Survey said an 8.6-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Sumatra at 2:38 pm (0838 GMT) at a depth of 33 kilometers (14.2 miles), revising earlier reports of a deeper, stronger quake.
The epicenter was some 435 kilometers (270 miles) from Banda Aceh, Indonesia, one of the hardest-hit areas in the December 26, 2004 tsunami that wrought devastation across the Indian Ocean and killed some 220,000 people.
The earthquake that caused the 2004 tsunami had a magnitude of 9.2, but also a much stronger vertical component, whereas Wednesday's earthquake was more horizontally directed, Sardina said.
Last year, a 9.0-magnitude earthquake caused a tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan, killing some 19,000 people.
