Indonesia lifts tsunami alert after powerful earthquake rattles residents

A tsunami alert has been lifted by Indonesian authorities following a magnitude 7.3 earthquake that struck off Flores Island.

People wait outside their house following an earthquake in Maumere, Indonesia.

People wait outside their homes following an earthquake in Maumere, Indonesia. Source: AP

A powerful 7.3-magnitude earthquake struck eastern Indonesia on Tuesday triggering a tsunami warning and sending residents fleeing from their homes.

But the quake caused only minor damage and injured one person, authorities said.

The tsunami warning was lifted about two hours after the quake struck at 0320 GMT in the Flores Sea, about 112 kilometres north of the town of Maumere, in the eastern part of Flores island.
"Everyone ran out into the street," Agustinus Florianus, a resident of Maumere town on Flores, told Reuters. Maumere was badly damaged by a quake of a similar magnitude in 1992.

"It felt like a wave, up and down," Zacharias Gentana Keranz, a resident of Larantuka told Reuters.

The disaster mitigation agency said one person was injured in Manggarai, on Flores, and a school building and several homes were damaged on Selayar island, in South Sulawesi.

The quake, from an active fault in the Flores Sea, was followed by at least 15 aftershocks with the biggest registering magnitude 5.6, the meteorological agency said.

But the quake caused no significant increase in sea levels.
Indonesia experiences frequent quakes and volcanic eruptions due to its position on the Pacific "Ring of Fire", an arc of intense seismic activity where tectonic plates collide that stretches from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.

Among Indonesia's string of deadly quakes was a devastating 2004 9.1-magnitude tremor that struck off the coast of Sumatra and triggered a tsunami that killed 220,000 throughout the region, including about 170,000 in Indonesia.

The Boxing Day disaster was one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history.

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.

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.

Additional reporting by Reuters

 


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2 min read
Published 14 December 2021 3:06pm
Updated 22 February 2022 2:04pm
By Akash Arora
Source: AFP, SBS


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