A disaster management official says at least 200 people have been killed by the powerful earthquake that triggered landslides and toppled buildings in western Indonesian Wednesday.
Priyadi Kardono, a spokesman for the National Disaster Management Agency, says the deaths were counted in the coastal Sumatran city of Padang, following Wednesday's powerful quake.
The bodies of 75 people have been found so far, and the death toll is expected to grow once officials tally casualties in other areas of the West Sumatra province.
The quake started fires, severed roads, cut off power to the city and sent hotels, shopping malls, and two hospitals crashing to the ground in the region. Bodies could be seen through the rubble.
Kardono said Thursday that about 500 buildings collapsed in Padang -- a sprawling regional capital of 900,000 people.
Thousands of people fled the coast after officials issued a tsunami warning. It has since been lifted and there were no signs of tidal waves.
The 7.6 magnitude earthquake in Indonesia comes a day after an unrelated tsunami in Samoa and American Samoa killed at least 100 people.
The Indonesian quake was on the same fault line that caused the 2004 tsunami that killed 230,000 in 11 countries.
"People ran to high ground. Houses and buildings were badly damaged," said Kasmiati, who lives on the coast near the quake's epicenter.
"I was outside, so I am safe, but my children at home were injured," she said before her cellphone went dead. Like many Indonesians, she uses one name.
Officials are telling citizens to brace themselves for what could be thousands more dead.
"This is a high-scale disaster, more powerful than the earthquake in Yogyakarta in 2006 when more than 3,000 people died," Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari said, referring to a major city on the main Indonesian island of Java.
The Indonesian government will spend $10 million in emergency medical aid to help the injured.
Dozens of people died in Padang back in 2007 after another earthquake.
With files from The Associated Press
