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JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP)- A strong earthquake shook eastern Indonesia on Saturday, sending panicked residents running out of their homes.
The tremor struck with a preliminary magnitude of 7.1 at a depth of about 60 miles in Maluku province, about 1,700 miles east of the capital, Jakarta, according to the Indonesian Meteorology and Geophysics Agency. The U.S. Geological Survey put the quake at a magnitude 6.3.
There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries and no tsunami alert was issued...
Indonesia, the world’s largest archipelago with 17,500 islands, is prone to seismic upheavals because of its location on the so-called Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of volcanoes and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.
Imagine the overwhelming fear the people of Indonesia must have felt and perhaps are still feeling after this quake, given the devastation of several years ago when a similar deep ocean quake occurred killing a multitude of people.
The relatively inconspicuous, 1731-m-high Kelut stratovolcano contains a summit crater lake that has been the source of some of Indonesia's most deadly eruptions. A cluster of summit lava domes cut by numerous craters has given the summit a very irregular profile. Satellitic cones and lava domes are also located low on the eastern, western, and SSW flanks. Eruptive activity has in general migrated in a clockwise direction around the summit vent complex. More than 30 eruptions have been recorded from Gunung Kelut since 1000 AD. The ejection of water from the crater lake during Kelut's typically short, but violent eruptions has created pyroclastic flows and lahars that have caused widespread fatalities and destruction. After more than 5000 persons were killed during an eruption in 1919, an ambitious engineering project sought to drain the crater lake. This initial effort lowered the lake by more than 50 m, but the 1951 eruption deepened the crater by 70 m, leaving 50 million cubic meters of water after repair of the damaged drainage tunnels. After more than 200 deaths in the 1966 eruption, a new deeper tunnel was constructed, and the lake's volume before the 1990 eruption was only about 1 million cubic meters.
This week's display by Anak Krakatau _ or "Child of Krakatau" _ is impressive, yet it is a mere sneeze when compared to the blast in August 1883 that obliterated its "father" in the most powerful explosion in recorded history.
That blast was heard as far away as 2,500 miles and choked the atmosphere with ash and dust, altering weather patterns for years. Some 36,000 people were killed in the eruptions and ensuing tsunamis.
Now the 985-foot peak growing from the ocean where Krakatau once stood is erupting, one of several Indonesian volcanoes that have roared to life in recent weeks.
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