Tsunami Warning Lifted Following Indonesia Quake

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 85 miles west of Bengkulu, a coastal town off Sumatra island, the U.S. Geological Survey said. It hit 18 miles beneath the ocean floor.Residents in Bengkulu — still nervous following a series of powerful quakes that struck the region last month — fled their homes, el-Shinta radio reported. Some jumped into cars or onto motorcycles.Suhardjono, a senior official at Indonesia's Meteorological and Geophysics Agency told el-Shinta the 4 a.m. quake was part of a series of aftershocks that have rattled the region since Sept. 12, when an 8.4-magnitude killed 23 people and destroyed thousands of buildings.Indonesia, the world's largest archipelago with a population of 235 million people, 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 earthquake that hit off the coast of Sumatra on Dec. 26, 2004, triggered a tsunami that killed more than 230,000 people in a dozen countries, more than two-thirds of them in Indonesia.The Japan Meteorological Agency warned after Thursday's quake that there was a small chance it could trigger a destructive, local tsunami. Indonesian authorities lifted the tsunami warning after the threat had passed.

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As in the days of Noah.....