www.perthnow.com.au/

This is our beloved port town as it is the link between the Indonesian mainland & the Mentawai Island chain. Most of the Mentawai boats' crew & families are from Padang. I sincerely hope everyone is ok.

It is sounding pretty bad.

My mate is in the mentawais on a surf trip. He is on the tengirri boat hope all is ok hes not due home till the 8th of oct

We got the crap shaken out of us last nite & evacuated the island. Very heavy scared the sh!t outta me. Thanks to the guys from the Addiction for helping out when it went dark. Not fun @ all.

No dammage in the islands at all, seems like only padang.

We had all our crew including the staff in one dugout in the dark while the owner of the camp went looking for two guests, there were 32 of us in a dugout in deep water in the dark, Addiction had a light on us most of the time then most of the guests jumped off the dugout onto the Addiction to lighten the load. I didnt no at the time but the indo crew can't swim so we had to get off, so scetchy I how can they live on such awsome islands and not swim? I have never felt or seen fear like this in my life plus we had 6 local kids on the boat as well.

Thanks Mac all good here, Padang is where it all happened, appreciate the thoughts but there is people that r worse of than me, my hotel in Padang has been leveled if that's any indicaion. Three days b4 I would be under that rubble.

Just arrived back this morning from Padang after my trip aboard the Tengirri out at the Mentawai's. I could'nt wait to get out of the place (Padang) as we had to spend 4 hours at Phil the Tengirri owners house in Padang as our flight had been delayed 3 hours, we were already on edge arriving at his house after seeing all the devistation on the way and we were defenitely on edge after we felt an after shock shake his 2 storey concrete house that already had cracks in the concrete floor and walls, the call was made and we decided to go and wait at the airport instead. The sights we saw on the way to the airport were shocking and i felt sad for the locals as this is something they have to live with every day. My own experience was minor as our boat only shook for about 15 seconds as we were far south down at Thunders and once word came through that it was on the main land there was no chance of a Tsunami, even though we kept one eye on how much water was on the reef we were safe from danger and the skipper was ready to go at short notice. Don't let these events deter anyone from going to the Mentawai's as you have more chance of getting hurt on the surgeons table at HT's than you do by earthquake. My heart goes out to the family and friends of those killed, injured or made homeless/jobless by the quake.

This whats left of the Amberjeng hotel.