A previous earthquake on the island of Java in March 2020. – WULUNG WIDARBA / AFP
In the heart of the Pacific “Ring of Fire”. A magnitude 6 earthquake struck off the coast of Indonesia on Saturday, the American Institute of Geophysics (USGS) said. The earthquake was recorded at a depth of 82 km, about 45 km from the locality of Malang on the island of Java. The agglomeration, which has nearly three million inhabitants, has been particularly shaken but so far no casualties have been reported. “It was strong enough and lasted quite a long time,” resident Ida Megfiroh told AFP. “Everything was swinging,” she added.
Indonesia regularly faces earthquakes or volcanic eruptions, due to its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, where tectonic plates collide.
In 2018, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.5 caused a tsunami that struck Palu, on the island of Sulawesi, causing the death or disappearance of 4,300 people. But the country remains marked by the earthquake of December 26, 2004 with a magnitude of 9.1 off the coast of Sumatra, causing a major tsunami that had resulted in the death of 220,000 people throughout the region, for about 170,000 for the only Indonesia. It is one of the deadliest natural disasters on record.