JAKARTA: A major 7.4-magnitude offshore quake struck in eastern Indonesia on Thursday (Apr 2), the US Geological Survey (USGS) said, triggering a tsunami warning and up to 30cm-high waves.
The quake hit at a depth of 35km in the Molucca Sea between the Sulawesi and Maluku island groups in the early morning, the USGS said.
The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) earlier said hazardous tsunami waves were possible within 1,000km of the epicentre along the coasts of Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia.
Waves of 30cm were recorded within 30 minutes of the quake in North Maluku province north of the island of Ternate, Indonesia’s BMKG geological agency said in a statement.
Twenty-centimetre waves were logged in Bitung in northeastern Sulawesi.
Malaysia’s meteorological department said in a Facebook post that there was no tsunami threat to Malaysia at the moment and that it was monitoring developments
One person was killed when a building collapsed in North Sulawesi province.
“The quake was felt strongly and around Manado … one person died and one person had a leg injury,” official George Leo Mercy Randang told AFP by telephone.
The victim was “buried under the rubble” of a collapsed building, he said.
Ternate resident Budi Nurgianto, 42, said he was inside his house when the tremor struck, sending people panicking outside.
“The quake was felt strongly. I heard it first from the walls of the house that shook,” he said.
“When I went outside, there were many people outside. They were panicked. The quake was felt (for) quite long, more than a minute.
“I even saw some people leaving their house without having finished their shower.”
An AFP journalist in Manado on Sulawesi, about 300km west of Ternate by sea, said the shaking woke him and others in the city of around 450,000 people.
“I immediately woke up and left my house. People (were) immediately scrambling outside. There is a school and the pupils rushed outside,” he said.
The shaking persisted for “quite long”, but he did not witness “significant damage”, he added.
Indonesia and neighbouring countries experience frequent earthquakes due to its location in the Pacific “Ring of Fire” – an arc of intense seismic activity where tectonic plates collide that stretches from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.
In 2004, a magnitude-9.1 quake struck Aceh province, causing a tsunami and killing more than 170,000 people in Indonesia.
