At least 38 people were killed in eastern Indonesia on Saturday after it was rocked by a 7.7-magnitude earthquake, one of the largest the region had experienced in decades, officials said.
The earthquake hit just north of Flores Island, according to the United States Geological Survey, about a thousand miles east of Jakarta, the capital. It caused several buildings to collapse on the island, and was one of the largest temblors to hit the area in more than 30 years, said Wijayanto, the director of earthquake and tsunami affairs at the Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency in Indonesia.
“An earthquake like this occurred in 1992 with a magnitude of 7.5, causing immense damage,” Mr. Wijayanto said in a statement. Like many Indonesians, he goes by one name. He added that the authorities would continue to monitor for aftershocks.
Lieutenant General Suharyanto, who leads the National Disaster Management Agency in Indonesia, said in a news conference on Saturday afternoon that 38 people had died in the quake and that many others had been injured. Fathur Rahman, the chief of the search and rescue office in Maumere, one of the largest towns on Flores Island, told The New York Times earlier that his team was still searching for people who could be buried under rubble.
Indonesia, an archipelago with about 17,500 islands, is at the edge of the Pacific Ocean, in an area known as the Ring of Fire. The region experiences frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions as large blocks of the Earth’s crust collide. More than 2,000 people were killed in 2018 after a 7.5-magnitude earthquake and ensuing tsunami devastated central Indonesia.
The authorities initially issued a tsunami warning on Saturday, but soon after said the threat had passed. In a news conference on Saturday afternoon, Emanuel Melkiades Laka Lena, the governor of East Nusa Tenggara Province, which includes Flores, urged residents to be cautious about “reports circulating on social media claiming that a massive tsunami or another major earthquake is imminent.”
“We ask everyone to help maintain calm and ensure that the information being shared does not cause unnecessary alarm,” he said.
The quake struck about 42 miles northwest of Ende, the regional capital, according to data from the United States Geological Survey. Several aftershocks were reported in the area in the hours after the temblor, including one with a magnitude of 6.1. The authorities warned that more could occur in the coming days.
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