Enjot, 45, who lost his home and several relatives, on Tuesday walked past the rubble of a building that collapsed in Monday’s earthquake in Cianjur, West Java, Indonesia.
Tatan Syuflana/AP
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Tatan Syuflana/AP
Enjot, 45, who lost his home and several relatives, on Tuesday walked past the rubble of a building that collapsed in Monday’s earthquake in Cianjur, West Java, Indonesia.
Tatan Syuflana/AP
JAKARTA, Indonesia — A 5.6-magnitude earthquake has killed more than 260 people and injured hundreds as buildings collapsed and panicked residents fled on the main Indonesian island of Java.
Bodies continued to be pulled from the rubble Tuesday morning in the hardest-hit city of Cianjur, located in the country’s most populous West Java province and about 135 miles south of the capital, Jakarta. . Some people are still missing.
While the magnitude is generally expected to cause minor damage to buildings and other structures, experts say the proximity to fault lines, the quake’s shallowness and infrastructure Inadequately unable to withstand earthquakes all contribute to damage.
Here’s a closer look at the quake and some of the reasons why it caused so much devastation.
Is Monday’s earthquake considered strong?
The US Geological Survey said Monday afternoon’s quake had a magnitude of 5.6 and occurred at a depth of 10 kilometers.
Earthquakes of this scale typically do not cause widespread damage to well-built infrastructure. But the agency points out, “There is no one magnitude beyond how much damage will happen. It depends on other factors, such as distance from the quake, the type of soil you’re on, construction” and other factors.
Dozens of buildings were damaged in Indonesia, including Muslim boarding schools, hospitals and other public facilities. Roads and bridges were also damaged, and some areas in the region lost power.
Why does the earthquake cause so much damage?
Experts say location near fault lines, depth of earthquakes and buildings not built with earthquake-resistant methods are factors that cause devastation.
“Although the quake was medium-sized, it was (at) close to the surface… and inland,” said Gayatri Marliyani, assistant professor of geology at Gadjah Mada University, in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. , near where people live”. “The energy is still large enough to cause significant shaking resulting in damage.”
Marliyani said the worst affected area is near several known faults.
A fault is a place where there is a long crack in the rock that forms the surface of the earth. When an earthquake occurs on one of these faults, the rock on one side of the fault will slide relative to the other side.
“This area probably has the most inland faults compared to other parts of Java,” Marliyani said.
She added that while some well-known bugs are in the area, there are many other active bugs that have not been well studied.
Danny Hilman Natawidjaja, an earthquake geologist at the Geotechnology Research Center of the Indonesian Academy of Sciences, said many buildings in the area were also not built with earthquake-resistant designs, which further contributed to the problem. part causing the damage.
“This makes an earthquake of this size and depth even more destructive,” he said.
Does Indonesia often have earthquakes like this?
The country of more than 270 million people is regularly subject to earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis due to its location on volcanic arcs and fault lines in the Pacific basin known as the “Ring of Fire”. This area stretches for about 40,000 kilometers (25,000 miles) and is home to most of the world’s earthquakes.
Many earthquakes in Indonesia are small and cause little or no damage. But there have also been deadly earthquakes.
In February, a 6.2 magnitude earthquake killed at least 25 people and injured more than 460 in West Sumatra province. In January 2021, a magnitude 6.2 earthquake killed more than 100 people and injured nearly 6,500 in West Sulawesi province.
The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami killed 230,000 people in dozens of countries, mostly in Indonesia.
