Jakarta: A moderate intensity earthquake measuring magnitude 5 on the Richter scale struck Indonesia’s Maluku province on Tuesday. According to Indonesia’s Meteorological, Climatological, and Geophysical Agency (BMKG), the epicentre of the earthquake was 226km from the Tanimbar Islands, at a depth of 163 km. There have been no reports of material damage or deaths due to the earthquake so far.
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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