Jakarta: A powerful earthquake measuring 6.6 magnitude on the Richter Scale struck off Halmahera island in North Maluku province in Indonesian on Tuesday. According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the depth of the earthquake was about 35 kilometres. No tsunami warning was issued by Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries after the earthquake. But Indonesia’s geophysics agency (BMKG) advised residents in nearby areas of possible aftershocks.
Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis frequently strike Indonesia, a vast archipelago nation of more than 270 million people because of its location on the ‘Ring of Fire’. The Ring of Fire, or the Circum-Pacific Belt, is a path along the Pacific Ocean characterized by active volcanoes and frequent earthquakes. It is a horseshoe-shaped belt about 40,000km long and about 500 km wide that contains two-thirds of the world’s total volcanoes and 90% of Earth’s earthquakes.
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In November 2022, a 5.6-magnitude quake hit the populous West Java province on the country’s main island of Java, killing 602 people. A magnitude-6.2 quake that shook Sulawesi island in January 2021 killed more than 100 people and left thousands homeless. In 2018, a magnitude-7.5 quake and subsequent tsunami in Palu on Sulawesi killed more than 2,200 people. In 2004, a 9.1-magnitude quake struck the coast of Sumatra and triggered a tsunami that killed 220,000 throughout the region, including about 170,000 in Indonesia.
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