INDONESIA: A magnitude-6.2 earthquake struck off Indonesia’s Sumatra coast early Monday, the U.S. Geological Survey said, although there were no tsunami alerts or reports of serious damage or fatalities.
The USGS reported that the quake was centred 48 kilometres (30 miles) south-southeast of Singkil city in Aceh province at a depth of 37 kilometers.
The earthquake occurred around 6:30 a.m. local time (2230 GMT), and the USGS upgraded it from its initial measure of 6.0 magnitude to a 48 km depth.
The Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) of Indonesia also recorded it as 6.2 and stated that there was no tsunami threat. In contrast, the nation’s disaster agency stated that there were no early reports of fatalities or significant damage.
“The earthquake caused people to panic. It was felt between 3-10 seconds in four districts in Aceh and North Sumatra province,” Abdul Muhari, a spokesman for the BNPB disaster mitigation organization, said in a statement.
Indonesia, an immense archipelago with more than 270 million people, suffers frequent earthquakes because it is located in a highly active seismic region where numerous tectonic plates collide.
On November 21, the city of Cianjur in West Java was struck by an earthquake with a magnitude of 5.6 that left at least 331 people dead and close to 600 injured. It was the deadliest incident in Indonesia since a quake and tsunami struck Sulawesi in 2018, killing roughly 4,340 people.
On December 26, 2004, one of Sumatra island’s deadliest earthquakes occurred, triggering a tsunami in the Indian Ocean that claimed more than 230,000 lives, including casualties from as far away as Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand. The powerful 9.1-magnitude earthquake caused 30-meter (100-foot) waves to pummelled the Banda Aceh shoreline on the island of Sumatra.
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