At least two persons were killed after a strong 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck off Flores island in eastern Indonesia early Saturday, the US Geological Survey and Indonesian authorities said, triggering a brief tsunami warning and prompting hundreds to evacuate.<\/p>\n
The epicentre of the shallow quake was located off the north coast of the island, about 68 kilometres (42 miles) northwest of Ende, USGS said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The initial jolt was followed by strong aftershocks in the same area, including one with a magnitude of 6.1.<\/p>\n
“At this point there are two reported fatalities” — a man and a woman, disaster agency spokesperson Berton Suar Pelita Panjaitan told reporters in Jakarta.<\/p>\n
“Once the data are confirmed, we will officially announce the final number of casualties and the extent of damage to buildings caused by the earthquake,” he said.<\/p>\n
Indonesia’s Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) had earlier warned there was a possibility of tsunami waves being generated by the quake.<\/p>\n
“Tsunami modelling results indicate that this earthquake has the potential to generate a tsunami in the provinces of East Nusa Tenggara, South Sulawesi, and West Nusa Tenggara,” BMKG earthquake and tsunami director Wijayanto said.<\/p>\n
An alert was issued for waves ranging from 0.5 metres to three metres (1.6 to 9.8 feet). The warning was later withdrawn.<\/p>\n
“Suddenly it started to shake, and I panicked,” 31-year-old hospital customer service official, Lukas Lotar, told AFP.<\/p>\n
“Patients also fled the hospital, the jolt was big. I saw some walls were cracked,” he told AFP.<\/p>\n
Residents in the town of Maumere on Flores Island, about 2,400 kilometres (1,500 miles) away, were evacuating to higher ground, an AFP correspondent saw.<\/p>\n
He said the sea in the area could be seen receding, a common phenomenon ahead of a possible tsunami.<\/p>\n
Images broadcast on Indonesian television showed hundreds of people in nearby Nagekeo regency evacuating the area as well as damaged buildings.<\/p>\n
Authorities have not reported any casualties but said tsunami waves between 19 and 30 centimetres have been detected.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Indonesia and neighbouring countries experience frequent earthquakes due to their location in the Pacific “Ring of Fire” — an arc of intense seismic activity stretching from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Among Indonesia’s history of deadly quakes is a devastating 9.1-magnitude tremor in 2004 that struck off the coast of Sumatra and triggered a tsunami that killed 220,000 throughout the region, including about 170,000 in Indonesia.<\/p>\n
The Boxing Day tragedy was one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history.<\/p>\n
In 2018, a powerful quake shook the island of Lombok and several more tremors followed over the next couple of weeks, killing more than 550 people on the holiday island and neighbouring Sumbawa.<\/p>\n
Later that year, a 7.5-magnitude quake and a subsequent tsunami in Palu on Sulawesi island left more than 4,300 people dead or missing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At least two persons were killed after a strong 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck off Flores island in eastern Indonesia…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1001791,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[23],"tags":[44517,746,374392,401186,400936,159,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-1001790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-earthquake","tag-environment","tag-flores-island","tag-flores-island-earthquake","tag-indonesia-earthquake","tag-science","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117097947869665813","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1001790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1001791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1001790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1001790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1001790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}