(Jakarta) A 7.3 magnitude earthquake hit eastern Indonesia on Tuesday, the USGS institute said, and the Tsunami Warning Center warned of the possibility of dangerous waves.
The earthquake occurred at 3:20 a.m. GMT in the Flores Sea, about 100 kilometers from the town of Maumere, and at a depth of 18.5 km, according to the USGS. This institute had initially estimated the magnitude at 7.6 and the depth at 76 km.
“Dangerous waves are possible along the coasts within a radius of 1,000 km around the epicenter,” the Honolulu-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center warned.
The USGS judged the risk of this earthquake causing casualties to be low, but noted that “recent earthquakes in this region have resulted in secondary risks such as tsunamis and landslides which may have caused severe damage. losses ”.
Shallow earthquakes tend to do more damage than deep earthquakes.
Indonesia regularly faces earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, due to its location on the Pacific ‘Ring of Fire’, where tectonic plates meet.
The archipelago remains marked by the earthquake of December 26, 2004 with a magnitude of 9.1 off the coast of Sumatra, which caused a gigantic tsunami and killed 220,000 people across the region, including about 170,000 for Indonesia alone.
In 2018, the island of Lombok and the neighboring island of Sumbawa were hit by a violent earthquake, which killed more than 550 people. In the same year, a 7.5 magnitude earthquake triggered a tsunami that struck Palu, on the island of Sulawesi, killing or missing 4,300 people.
In January, around 100 people were killed by a magnitude 6.2 earthquake on the island of Celebes, which brought down many buildings in the coastal town of Mamuju.