Indonesia rocked by another quake

JAKARTA,Indonesia-A strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.2 struck late Thursday off the western coast of Sumatra, the same area shaken by a major 8.4-magnitude temblor that killed nine people Wednesday. The region has been wracked by quakes and aftershocks for the past two days.The most recent quake struck at 11:09 p.m. (12:09 p.m. ET), 110 kilometers (65 miles) west-northwest of Sumatra's Bengkulu province at a depth of only 3 km (2 miles), according to the U.S. Geological Survey.The Indonesian government issued, then canceled, a tsunami alert. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.A quake with the same magnitude struck the region several hours earlier, at 5:48 p.m. (6:48 a.m. ET). The temblor vibrated under the Celebes Sea at a depth of about 21 km (13 miles). It was centered about 290 km (180 miles) northeast of Bitung, a city on the northern coast of Sulawesi, and the same distance south-southeast of General Santos, Mindanao, Philippines.Wednesday's quake generated a series of aftershocks, including two major ones early Thursday measuring 7.8 and 8.1, said David Applegate, senior science adviser at the U.S. Geological Survey.{{{"It's been an incredible number of years for Indonesia and particularly for Sumatra" in terms of earthquakes, Applegate said on CNN's "American Morning" on Thursday."What we have here is a subduction zone, where one of the Earth's plates is moving down beneath the other," he said."In this case, the Indian Ocean and the Australian Plate are moving beneath the Eurasian Plate."In this kind of a situation you're going to get earthquakes as the strain builds up, but what we're seeing now is almost every segment of this plate has ruptured just in the last several years," Applegate said.}}} "In each case, it relieves pressure in one area but then that increases the pressure somewhere else. And so, for example, what we saw yesterday was the magnitude 8.4 quake ruptured to the north along this boundary. This 7.8 was at the northern end of that."
In the past 24 hours the region has been rocked by heavy seismic activity-with a total of at least 60 tremors rattling the country, according to Indonesia's Social Welfare Minister Aburizal Bakrie.The seismic shakedown began Wednesday night with a deadly 8.4-magnitude quake -- centered in southern Sumatra, which is west northwest of Jakarta.A 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Thursday morning at about 6:45 a.m. (7:45 p.m. Wednesday ET), USGS said. The epicenter was about 185 km south-southeast of Padang and about 200 km northwest of Bengkulu.About four hours later, the USGS reported that a 7.1-magnitude quake had rocked the region. Sandwiched in-between were half a dozen temblors measuring 5.0 and above.
At least 10 aftershocks of magnitude 5.1 to 6.0 were felt in the region after the larger quake, which shook buildings hundreds of miles away, killed at least nine people and generated a small tsunami about 60 cm high along the Sumatran coast."Our main concern is the people," Bakrie said from Padang. "The victims are not as dire as we thought and everything has been taken care of."People in the Indian Ocean region have been extremely skittish about the possibility of earthquake-induced tsunamis since December 2004, when gigantic waves triggered by a 9.1-magnitude quake that killed more than 200,000 people in seven countries.Wednesday evening's quake killed at least nine people in Bengkulu province and Padang, and an unknown number were injured or missing, according to officials. Search-and-rescue operations, suspended overnight, resumed at daylight Thursday, which also marked the start of the holy month of Ramadan in the mostly Muslim country.The relatively light loss of life can be attributed to national and provincial governments being battle-tested by a string of powerful earthquakes over the last three years, Bakrie said."The people understand more about the problems and the danger of the earthquakes," according to Bakrie. "The central government as well as the district government, at the provincial level, has warned the people ... so the system works."The powerful quake shook buildings about 385 miles away in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, and also in Singapore, about 435 miles from the epicenter."Doors started to creak, and the whole apartment seemed to ... make a cracking noise," said Rahayu Saraswati, who lives on the 35th floor of a building in Jakarta. "We ran out to the emergency staircase with other residents of the floor and ran all the way down to the lobby."

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/09/13/indonesia.quake/index.html

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