No tsunami detected after 7.6 quake strikes eastern Indonesia

JAKARTA - Indonesia issued a tsunami warning for almost three hours after a powerful 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck off Indonesia’s Tanimbar islands on Tuesday, but no significant changes in sea level were recorded, and the warning was lifted.

At least four aftershocks were reported after the quake that was also felt in some parts of northern Australia.

Indonesia disaster agency officials said that at least 15 homes and two school buildings were damaged, with one person injured, after the tremor was felt strongly for 3-5 seconds. 

The quake, locally measured as magnitude 7.5, struck at a depth of 130km at 2.47am local time (1.47am Monday Singapore time), the country’s geophysics agency BMKG said. The tsunami warning was lifted at 5.43am.

“Based on our observation of four tide gauges around the earthquake’s epicentre... there was no anomaly detected or no significant changes of sea level,” BMKG head Dwikorita Karnawati told a news conference, advising people who lived near the coast to continue with their activities.

The European Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) recorded the magnitude of the quake as 7.6, after initially reporting it as 7.7. The US Geological Survey also pegged it as a 7.6 magnitude.

News website Liputan6.com reported that houses in Saumlaki town in Yamdena island were badly damaged.

Xinhua news agency said that some houses had cracks and others collapsed, according to Mr Doni Layan, head of operational unit of the disaster management and mitigation agency in Kepulauan Tanimbar district, the hardest hit area.

Mr Layan added that more than 2,000 people in the district had escaped coastal areas after the quake.

“We have carried out several times of drill over an anticipation of tsunami. So when the quake happened, the residents rushed to leave the coastal areas and headed to higher grounds,” he said.

The tremor was also felt by residents in Ambon, the capital of the Indonesian province of Maluku.

“I was in bed, then I felt little shake. I woke up and found out that many of my friends felt it too,” Hamdi, an Indonesian in Ambon, told AFP.

An unidentified resident in Dili, capital of Timor Leste, reported a “very strong, long shake”, in a remark left at the website of the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre, a non-profit monitoring centre.

The quake caused light poles to sway and sent residents running out of buildings and onto streets in Tual, a port in Maluku, videos posted by users on Twitter showed.

The quake was felt as far as Darwin, capital of Australia’s Northern Territory, where at least 1,000 people reported it to the Australian Geoscience agency.

“Sustained vigorous shaking here in #Darwin just now from what looks to be a pretty serious #earthquake to our north,” user @OreboundImages posted on Twitter.

“Could hear the earth rumbling,” another Darwin resident posted on the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre website.

“Was huge! Went on for ages, whole house was really shaking,” still another Darwin resident noted.

Video posted by Twitter users in Darwin showed water in glasses and pitchers sloshing from side to side.

Indonesia experiences frequent seismic activity due to its position on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, where tectonic plates collide.

On Nov 21, a 5.6-magnitude quake hit the populous West Java province on the main island of Java, killing 602 people.

A major earthquake off Sumatra on Dec 26, 2004, set off an Indian Ocean tsunami that killed more than 230,000 people as far away as Sri Lanka, India and Thailand.

That powerful 9.1-magnitude quake triggered 100-foot (30m) waves that hit the shore of Banda Aceh on Sumatra. REUTERS, XINHUA, AFP