NewsWire UPDATE: United Nations humanitarian chief John Holmes is now reporting to CNN that over 1,100 people are dead as a result of two large earthquakes in Indonesia over the past two days. The death toll could climb to thousands as corpses are being stacked outside of hospitals in Padang and elsewhere. vh/TO

    More than 500 people are dead after a massive earthquake struck the city of Padang on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia on Wednesday. The quake, which registered 7.6 on the Richter scale, caused more than 500 structures to collapse, and thousands are feared to be trapped in the rubble. On Thursday morning, just as the airport in Padang reopened, a second quake struck, this time with a magnitude of 6.6.

    "Every building over three stories in Padang suffered damage from the initial quake," reported The New York Times on Thursday, "and the city's three main hospitals all collapsed. At the biggest hospital, Djamil, beds were pulled from the wreckage to serve the injured. Soon, however, all the mattresses were soaked in blood. Gloves, medicine bottles and bandages were strewn on the ground. Dozens of bodies were piled nearby, some clothed, some not, and weeping citizens searched the faces for missing relatives."

    Indonesia's government has dispatched rescue workers to the area to minister to the injured and give relief to thousands of people displaced when their homes were destroyed. Siti Fadilah Supari, the nation's health minister said, "I think it's more than thousands, if we look at how widespread the damage is. This is a high-scale disaster."

    The two quakes near Padang came less than 24 hours after an undersea earthquake struck near the South Pacific islands of Samoa, American Samoa and Tonga. That event, which measured 8.0 on the Richter scale, triggered a tsunami, which battered the Samoan capitol city of Apia. 154 people were reported killed, 115 on Samoa, 30 on American Samoa and nine on Tonga. The casualty numbers are expected to rise, as villages, resorts and businesses along the coastline were wiped out by the tsunami.

    Seismologists do not believe the events in the Samoas, Tonga and Sumatra are related, however. According to The Guardian UK, "The earthquakes in the South Pacific occurred in a region of extraordinary geological activity called the Ring of Fire, which stretches from Indonesia to the coast of Chile. Several tectonic plates converge and create enormous pressure in the Earth's crust. Nine out of ten earthquakes in the world happen in the region. It is unlikely the two latest earthquakes are connected, according to seismologists. They were caused by slippages in faults that took place 16 hours and 10,000km apart on two different tectonic plates."

    Padang, a city of 900,000 on the west coast of Sumatra, was in chaos after the quakes. Thousands of residents wandered dazed in the streets to the sound of blaring sirens, and fires burned all over the city. Padang's Mayor Fauzi Bahar said, "We really need help. We call on people to come to Padang to evacuate bodies and help the injured."

    To listen to an audio USGS telecast report on the earthquakes click below.

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