Indonesia was rocked by two powerful earthquakes on August 15including a devastating magnitude 7.7 quake near Flores Island that triggered a tsunami warning and dozens of aftershocks.
The event once again highlighted why Indonesia is among the most earthquake-prone regions on Earth.
The answer lies deep beneath the country’s islands, where several massive tectonic plates collide.
Indonesia sits at the meeting point of four major tectonic plates: the Australian Plate, Sunda Plate, Pacific Plate, and Philippine Sea Plate.
This makes the region one of the most geologically active zones in the world.
The August 15 earthquake occurred near Flores in eastern Indonesia, a region influenced by the complex interaction between the Australian Plate and the Sunda Plate.
The Australian Plate is steadily moving northward and diving beneath the Sunda Plate in a process known as subduction.
As the plates become locked together, enormous stress builds up over decades or even centuries. When the rocks can no longer withstand the pressure, they suddenly rupture, releasing huge amounts of energy in the form of an earthquake.
The main magnitude 7.7 quake struck at a relatively shallow depth of around 10-15 kilometres beneath the seabed, making the shaking particularly intense across Flores and nearby islands.
Shallow earthquakes generally cause greater damage because the seismic energy has less distance to travel before reaching the surface.
The second significant quake and the numerous tremors that followed were likely aftershocks triggered by the readjustment of stress along the fault system.
When a large section of the Earth’s crust breaks, surrounding faults often respond to the sudden redistribution of pressure, producing additional earthquakes that can continue for days, weeks, or even months.
The Flores region has a long history of major earthquakes. In 1992, a magnitude 7.5 earthquake and tsunami struck the same broad area, causing widespread destruction and thousands of deaths.
Scientists consider the eastern Sunda-Banda arc one of the most active seismic belts in the world.
The latest earthquakes are another reminder that Indonesia sits on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a horseshoe-shaped belt surrounding the Pacific Ocean where most of the world’s earthquakes and volcanoes occur.
As long as these tectonic plates continue to collide and slide beneath one another, powerful earthquakes will remain an unavoidable part of life across the Indonesian archipelago.
– Ends
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