7.0 scale earthquake shakes east Indonesia, no tsunami alert

Earthquake reading northern California, Dec 2022. James St. John. Creative Commons.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP/UNB) — A strong earthquake shook eastern Indonesia on Wednesday, with no damage immediately reported and no tsunami warning issued.

Some residents tried to escape from houses after the magnitude 7.2 earthquake.

The U.S. Geological Survey said it occurred 60 kilometers (37.2 miles) deep under the sea, centered 150 kilometers (93.2 miles) northwest of Tobelo in North Maluku province.

No tsunami warning was issued by Indonesia’s Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Honolulu briefly said there was a potential threat to nearby Indonesian coasts but lifted the notice soon afterward.

Pius Ohoiwutun, a resident of Tobelo said that some people was running from houses when the quake shook.

“I felt a little swaying as the lamps also said. Some people tried to escape from their houses,” Ohoiwutun said on Wednesday.

A magnitude 6.1 quake also shook eastern Indonesia earlier Wednesday morning. No damage was reported.

Indonesia, a vast archipelago and a home of more than 270 million people, is frequently hit by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions because of its location on the “Ring of Fire,” an arc of seismic faults around the Pacific Basin.

A magnitude 5.6 earthquake on Nov. 21 killed at least 331 people in West Java. It was the deadliest in Indonesia since a 2018 quake and tsunami in Sulawesi killed about 4,340 people.

In 2004, an extremely powerful Indian Ocean quake set off a tsunami that killed more than 230,000 people in a dozen countries, most of them in Indonesia’s Aceh province.