"We felt short shakes, but the shakes did not make us scared," said Peter Manik, a military officer in the town of Painan.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the relatively strong quake occurred at 9:37 a.m. local time about 90 miles (140 km) south-southwest of the Sumatra city of Padang.
In September 2007, 23 people were killed and thousands of buildings were destroyed in the province and nearby Bengkulu province by a 7.9 magnitude quake.
In 2004, over 170,000 people were killed in Aceh province on the northern tip of Sumatra Island after a tsunami triggered by a powerful quake devastated coastal areas of the province and other countries from Southeast Asia to Africa.
