The Department of Meteorology has issued a No Tsunami Threat Bulletin for Sri Lanka following a magnitude 7.7 earthquake that struck off eastern Indonesia in the early hours of Saturday.

Sri Lanka’s National Tsunami Early Warning Centre confirmed that the island’s coastal areas remain safe for normal day-to-day activities, NewsFirst reported. The department said the bulletin was issued in consultation with relevant national and international agencies.

The quake was recorded at about 3.28 a.m. Sri Lanka time (2158 GMT), Hiru News reported. The Met Department placed it in the Flores region of Indonesia at 8.51°S and 121.39°E, at a depth of 14 kilometres.

Two killed as buildings collapse

Estimates of the quake’s depth vary between monitoring agencies. The US Geological Survey put it at 10 kilometres, with an epicentre 68 km north-northwest of the city of Ende in East Nusa Tenggara province, while Indonesia’s Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) recorded a depth of 15 kilometres followed by several aftershocks.

At least two residents were killed and two others injured, according to preliminary reports from the Maumere Search and Rescue Agency cited by Indonesia’s disaster management agency, AP News reported. Buildings collapsed across Flores island, and hospitals in the Ende district moved patients, beds and oxygen cylinders outdoors as a precaution.

Students at St. Peter Major Seminary in Sikka fled during morning Mass when the roof of an assembly hall gave way. “Our students and nuns ran out in panic beneath a collapsing roof,” said the seminary’s rector, the Rev. Guidelbertus Tanga. “At least one priest suffered a broken leg after jumping from the second floor of a building during the quake.”

Warning lifted

Indonesian authorities initially issued a tsunami warning for parts of East Nusa Tenggara, West Nusa Tenggara, South Sulawesi and Southeast Sulawesi, urging coastal residents to move to higher ground. Waves of less than one metre were recorded in several areas, Ada Derana reported, citing Reuters.

BMKG later lifted the warning after monitoring showed no significant sea-level changes. Australia’s tsunami warning centre said the quake posed no threat to the Australian mainland, its islands or territories.

Indonesia, an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands, sits on the Pacific “Ring of Fire” and is among the world’s most earthquake-prone nations. Flores was struck by a similarly powerful quake in December 1992, when the tremor and the tsunami it triggered killed more than 2,500 people, Al Jazeera reported.

Sources