JAKARTA, Indonesia - A powerful earthquake rocked western Indonesia before dawn Thursday, jolting people from their sleep and sending them fleeing by car and foot. Authorities briefly issued a tsunami warning, but the feared wave never came.
The 7.1-magnitude quake struck 135 kilometers (85 miles) west of Bengkulu, a coastal town off Sumatra island, the U.S. Geological Survey said. It hit 30 kilometers (18 miles) beneath the ocean floor.
Residents in Bengkulu _ still jittery following a series of powerful quakes that struck the region early last month _ fled their homes, some jumping into cars or onto motorcycles, el-Shinta radio reported.
There were no reports of damage after the tremor, which struck at 4 a.m., according to Arizal, a local meteorological official, who like many Indonesians goes by only one name.
Indonesia, the world's largest archipelago nation, is prone to seismic upheaval due to its location on the "Ring of Fire," an arc of volcanos and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin. A magnitude-9 quake off Sumatra's coast in 2004 triggered a tsunami that killed more than 230,000 people in a dozen countries, most of them in Indonesia.
Last month, an 8.4-magnitude quake off Bengkulu that followed two tremors measuring 7.8 and 7.1, killed 23 people and destroyed thousands of buildings.
The region has since been hit by hundreds of aftershocks. Suhardjono, a senior official at Indonesia's Meteorological and Geophysics Agency, told el-Shinta that Thursday's tremor was among them.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center and Japan's Meteorological Agency initially warned that the quake had the potential to trigger a local tsunami, but the alerts were lifted after the threat passed.
Friday, November 09, 2007
Strong Earthquake rocks Western Indonesia
