Less than a month after another earthquake in the same area claimed more than 300 lives, a 5.8-magnitude earthquake struck Java, the largest island in Indonesia, on Thursday.
Since a 2018 earthquake and subsequent tsunami killed more than 4,000 people on the island of Sulawesi, the tremor that struck Cinajur on November 21 was the deadliest in the archipelago nation. Indonesia’s location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” where tectonic plates meet, causes regular seismic and volcanic activity.
According to the United States Geological Survey, the earthquake happened at 7:50 a.m. local time (0:50 GMT) around 15 kilometres from Cianjur, the epicentre of the deadly tremor in November.
A low probability of injuries or property damage was predicted to result from the earthquake, which occurred at a depth of 123 kilometres (76 miles).
Cianjur and Sukabumi, the two cities closest to the epicentre, have not yet been reported as having any damage, local disaster mitigation agency officials said on Thursday.
But schools were temporarily evacuated in Sukabumi.
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“The epicentre of the earthquake is in Sukabumi, so it was only lightly felt in Cianjur. No reports of damage to houses or casualties,” said Wawan Setawan, a disaster agency official in Cianjur told the media. “We have yet to receive reports of damage caused by the earthquake”, an official in Sukabumi, Imran Wardhani, said soon after the tremor”.
Recall that a shallow 5.6-magnitude earthquake struck Cianjur last month, causing landslides, collapsed structures, and at least 334 fatalities, thousands of injuries, and tens of thousands of homeless people.
This week, Save the Children issued a warning that the unsanitary living circumstances of the evacuees presented a “ticking time bomb” of disease and infection. There have been thousands of reports of respiratory illnesses and hundreds of reports of diarrhoea.
Joko Widodo, the president of Indonesia, will be in the region on Thursday to deliver relief to the locals who are in need.
Story was adapted from Punch.
