The US Geological Survey (USGS) said that the quake, which has since been downgraded to a magnitude of 7.6, struck at 6.48am local time at a depth of 35km
A powerful 7.6-magnitude earthquake has struck Indonesia, triggering a tsunami warning.
The tremor hit the Northern Molucca Sea on Thursday (2 April), according to the US Geological Survey (USGS), with a US monitoring centre issuing an alert cautioning of potential “hazardous tsunami waves” within 1,000km of the quake’s epicentre.
The earthquake, which has since been downgraded to a magnitude of 7.6, struck at 6.48am local time at a depth of 35km. Its epicentre was 127 kilometres (79 miles) west-northwest of Ternate, in the archipelago’s North Maluku province, which has a population of over 205,000, according to USGS.
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The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center confirmed that hazardous tsunami waves were possible “within 1,000km of the epicentre” along the coastlines of Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia. USGS also cautioned that tsunami waves reaching between 0.3 metres and one metre (3.2ft) above tide level were possible along parts of the Indonesian coastline, reports the Mirror.
In additional guidance, the US tsunami warning system predicted waves of less than 30 centimetres above tide level for the coastlines of Guam, Japan, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, and Taiwan. Japan’s meteorological agency also noted that “slight sea level changes” may be observed along the nation’s coastline, though no tsunami damage was anticipated.
Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology confirmed there was no tsunami threat to the Australian mainland, nor to its islands or territories.
Indonesia, a sprawling archipelago of islands home to more than 280 million people, sits atop major seismic fault lines and is frequently struck by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions due to its location on the Ring of Fire, a 40,000-kilometre (25,000-mile) horseshoe-shaped belt encircling the Pacific Ocean. The Ring of Fire accounts for 75% of the world’s volcanoes and 90% of its earthquakes.
In 2022, a shallow 5.6-magnitude tremor claimed the lives of more than 600 people in West Java’s Cianjur city, making it the deadliest earthquake in Indonesia since a 2018 quake and tsunami in Sulawesi killed more than 4,300 people.
In 2004, a devastating Indian Ocean earthquake triggered a Boxing Day tsunami that killed more than 230,000 people across a dozen countries, with the vast majority of victims in Indonesia’s Aceh province.
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