Jakarta Offices Evacuated as 6.1 Magnitude Quake Jolts City
A 6.1 magnitude earthquake rattled Indonesia’s Java island, forcing evacuation of office and residential buildings in Jakarta and its suburbs.
The epicenter of the quake was near Lebak in Banten province at a depth of 10 kilometers, Indonesia’s Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency said on Twitter. There were no immediate reports of any loss of lives from the impact of the quake, which initially measured 6.4 on the Richter scale, the agency said. The temblor was relatively shallow and triggered no aftershocks, it said.
More than 100 buildings were damaged on the outskirts of Jakarta, Kompas TV reported, citing Kaprawi, Banten head of the nation’s disaster mitigation agency.
Indonesia’s 17,000 islands are especially prone to earthquakes because the country straddles the Ring of Fire, an arc of fault lines and volcanoes that causes frequent seismic upheavals. Waves unleashed in 2004 by the undersea earthquake off the Sumatran coast caused the deadliest natural disaster this century, taking more than 220,000 lives and leaving more than 1.5 million homeless.
“We were immediately evacuated once the earthquake happened,” said Josua Pardede, chief economist at Bank Permata, who worked at the 28th floor of a building in Jakarta’s main Sudirman business district.
The impact of the midday quake was also felt in Bogor, Bandung, and several cities in central Java and Sumatra, the agency said. Trading at the Indonesia Stock Exchange was unaffected by the temblor, Rheza Andhika, a spokesman said in a text message. The benchmark Jakarta Composite Index traded near a record 6,565.310 by 2:31 p.m. local time.
A 6.1 magnitude earthquake rattled Indonesia’s Java island, forcing evacuation of office and residential buildings in Jakarta and its suburbs.
The epicenter of the quake was near Lebak in Banten province at a depth of 10 kilometers, Indonesia’s Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency said on Twitter. There were no immediate reports of any loss of lives from the impact of the quake, which initially measured 6.4 on the Richter scale, the agency said. The temblor was relatively shallow and triggered no aftershocks, it said.
More than 100 buildings were damaged on the
outskirts of Jakarta, Kompas TV reported, citing Kaprawi, Banten head of the nation’s disaster mitigation agency.
Indonesia’s 17,000 islands are especially prone to
earthquakes because the country straddles the Ring of Fire, an arc of fault lines and volcanoes that causes frequent seismic upheavals. Waves unleashed in 2004 by the undersea earthquake off the Sumatran coast caused the deadliest natural disaster this century, taking more than 220,000 lives and leaving more than 1.5 million homeless.
“We were
immediately evacuated once the earthquake happened,” said Josua Pardede, chief economist at Bank Permata, who worked at the 28th floor of a building in Jakarta’s main Sudirman business district.
The impact of the
midday quake was also felt in Bogor, Bandung, and several cities in
central Java and Sumatra, the agency said. Trading at the Indonesia Stock Exchange was unaffected by the temblor, Rheza Andhika, a spokesman said in a text message. The benchmark Jakarta Composite Index traded near a record 6,565.310 by 2:31 p.m. local time.
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