ABC AUSTRALIA, Saturday, January 28, 2006. 7:05am (AEDT)
Indonesian earthquake rattles Darwin
Darwin residents have been shaken from their sleep by an earthquake in the Banda
Sea measuring 7.7 on the Richter scale.
The quake happened about 830 kilometres north-north-west of Darwin and the United
States Geological Survey (USGS) says it was about 340 kilometres deep.
Tremors shook furniture and rattled windows for a minute at 2.30am ACST.
Geoscience Australia spokesman Dr David Gepsom says there is no sign of any
damage in northern Australia.
"No reports of damage, however that's not to say that if there was - there could be
from such an earthquake, there may be some localised damage near the earthquake
somewhere in the Indonesian Archipelago, but it was a deep earthquake but it would
be only localised in general," he said.
The quake occurred in the Banda Sea, around 195 kilometres south of Ambon city,
USGS says on its website.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii, which monitors seismic events and
their tidal wave-generating potential, put out a bulletin following the quake, but says no
tsunami is expected.
"A destructive tsunami is not expected from the earthquake," centre assistant director
Stuart Weinstein told AFP.
"The quake was very deep, its 340 kilometres or roughly 220 miles deep. It's so far
under the surface that it's not going to cause enough displacement of the sea floor
that it'll generate a tsunami," he said.
Indonesia's Aceh province was the hardest hit by the 9.3-magnitude quake off the
coast of Sumatra that triggered tsunamis on December 26, 2004. The waves killed
more than 220,000 people around the Indian Ocean.
An official with the Jakarta meteorological office says it recorded the quake at 7.3 on
the Richter scale.
It was felt in Ambon and the towns of Tual and Saumlaki, also in the Maluku island
chain, as well as in Sorong in Papua province, Kupang in East Nusa Tenggara
province and the South Sulawesi provincial capital of Makassar, all of which encircled
the epicentre of the quake, he told AFP.
A local policeman in Ambon, who declined to be identified, says the quake was "felt
very strongly in Ambon and caused many people to flee their homes".
"I ran out of the office along with my colleagues," he told AFP, adding that he was not
sure if there were any casualties or damage.
The sprawling Indonesian archipelago sits on the so-called Pacific "Ring of Fire",
where the meeting of continental plates causes high volcanic and seismic activity.
- ABC/AFP
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