Earthquake Journal Entry
Indonesia Rocked By Another Big Quake (November 2, 2009)
The bulls-eye shows the epicenter of this week's earthquake in eastern Indonesia. The purple lines show where tectonic plates are subducting in the region. USGS.
Eastern Indonesia was slammed by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake, less than a month after a deadly magnitude 7.6 quake rocked Sumatra and killed more than 1,100 people. The new quake spread panic as residents ran from their homes to find higher ground, fearful of a tsunami. But the quake struck too far below Earth's surface to trigger a tsunami.
The epicenter of this week's quake was 145 miles (230 km) northwest of Saumlaki and more than 1,600 miles (2,600 km) east of the capital Jakarta. It struck at a depth of 83 miles (134 km) below the ocean floor, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS). Officials in Saumlaki said there were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries in the lightly-populated region.
Quake-prone Indonesia is part of the Ring of Fire, the huge arc of volcanoes and earthquake faults where tectonic plates meet along subduction zones surrounding the Pacific Ocean. A subduction zone is a region where a lighter plate dives under a denser one. In Indonesia, the Indo-Australian plate subducts the Eurasian plate.
Indonesia has been hammered by several violent quakes in recent years, including the catastrophic magnitude 9.0 quake in Sumatra in December 2004. That quake and the tsunami it triggered killed over 230,000 people in nations around the Indian Ocean in one of history's worst-ever natural disasters. Sumatra was also smacked by a deadly magnitude 8.4 quake in September 2007 and one of magnitude 8.7 in March 2005.
