Magnitude 4.8 quake now hits Indonesia's West Java, no casualties reported

 

JAKARTA (Reuters): A series of shallow earthquakes hit Indonesia's West Java province on late Sunday with the biggest at magnitude 4.8 during night causing residents to flee their homes, damage to buildings but no casualties, local authorities said.

The quake's epicentre was 2km (1.25 miles) northeast of Sumedang in West Java province at a depth of 5km, while two previous quakes were in smaller magnitude, the country's geophysics agency (BMKG) said.

Authorities in Sumedang said no casualties had been recorded so far, but three residents suffered minor injuries and there had been damage to houses and two hospitals where patients had to be evacuated to emergency tents.

BMKG asked residents and local authorities to stay vigilant because of the risk of aftershocks and advised people to avoid hilly areas due to the risk of landslides.

Only on Saturday (Dec 30), an earthquake of magnitude 6.2 on the Richter scale jolted Indonesia's Irian Jaya late at night, the National Centre for Seismology reported.

According to the NCS, the epicentre of the quake was found to be at Latitude: -3.11 and Longitude: 139.28, respectively.

In November 2022, more than 300 people died after a magnitude 5.6 quake hit the town of Cianjur in West Java province.

Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis frequently strike Indonesia, a country of more than 270 million people, because of its location on the "Ring of Fire."

The Ring of Fire, or the Circum-Pacific Belt, is a path along the Pacific Ocean characterised by active volcanoes and frequent earthquakes.

It is a horseshoe-shaped belt about 40,000km long and about 500 km wide that contains two-thirds of the world's total volcanoes and 90 per cent of Earth's earthquakes.

Reporting by Stefanno Sulaiman; editing by Jason Neely - Reuters