Undersea quake south of Indonesia's Bali causes panic, minor damage

JAKARTA (REUTERS) - An undersea earthquake with a magnitude of 6.1 struck south of Indonesia's Bali on Tuesday (July 16), the European earthquake monitoring agency EMSC said, causing minor damage and prompting residents and visitors on the tourist island to briefly flee buildings.

There were no reports of casualties from the quake and no tsunami warning was issued by the Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre.

The epicentre was 102km south-west of the island's capital, Denpasar, and was 100km deep, the EMSC said.

The US Geological Survey recorded the quake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.7.

One resident said people in Denpasar ran out of their boarding house in pyjamas after feeling the quake.

A Twitter user with the handle Indounik in the town of Ubud on Bali said the quake was "strong enough to make me adopt the drop, cover & hold approach recommended to survive a quake".

Another Twitter user, Marc van Voorst, described the quake as feeling like "a heavy truck or train passing by at close range". He said there was no panic, even though his hotel in the Uluwatu area shook quite a bit.

Indonesia's disaster mitigation agency distributed a photograph of damage at the Lokanatha temple in Denpasar, showing smashed masonry lying on the ground.

Lius Winarto, a sales administrator at the Mercure Hotel Nusa Dua, said by telephone a small part of the building's roof had been damaged.

"We felt the quake quite strongly...but thankfully no one was hurt and there was only minor damage," he said. "Everything has gone back to normal now."

There was also minor damage at a school, a house and a temple in different areas on the southern side of Bali, according to online portal Balipost.com.

The transport ministry said Bali airport was operating normally.

The quake could also be felt in other cities on the neighbouring islands of Lombok and Java, Indonesia's meteorology and geophysics agency said in a statement.

Indonesia suffers frequent earthquakes, sometimes causing tsunamis, because it lies on the seismically active Pacific Ring of Fire.

Its Moluccas islands were hit by a powerful 7.2 quake on Sunday that killed at least two people and prompted hundreds to flee their homes.

The most devastating tremor in recent Indonesian history was on Dec 26, 2004, when a magnitude 9.5 quake triggered a tsunami that killed around 226,000 people along the shorelines of the Indian Ocean, including more than 126,000 in Indonesia.

A tsunami also hit the city of Palu in Sulawesi last year, killing thousands.