Large Quake Rocks Indonesia, Australia; No Damage
Date: 03-Mar-05
Country: AUSTRALIA / INDONESIA
Rahmat Triyono, the officer in charge at Jakarta's Meteorological and Geophysical Agency, said the quake's epicentre was 320 km (200 miles) under the sea, too deep to cause a tsunami.
"If we look at its depth, there is no possibility of a tsunami," Triyono told Reuters in Jakarta.
The quake, estimated to have a magnitude between 6.8 and 7.1, was centred in the Banda Sea in Indonesia's east, about 800 km (500 miles) north of Darwin, and struck at 1050 GMT.
"It lasted about a minute," a spokesman for state-run Geoscience Australia said.
Geoscience Australia seismologist Mark Leonard also said the earthquake was unlikely to cause a tsunami.
"The Banda Sea is one of the most seismically active areas in the world and gets an earthquake of about magnitude 5 every couple of months," he told the AAP news agency.
Triyono said there had been no immediate reports of any damage or casualties.
The quake was felt as far away as 300 km (190 miles) south of Darwin in the northern Australian town of Katherine. It was also felt around the Moluccas island chain in Indonesia's east and the remote province of Papua, which borders Papua New Guinea.
Indonesia has long been used to earthquakes, but a massive tremor of magnitude 9.0 that struck on Dec. 26 off Sumatra island, triggering huge waves, has heightened fears across the country of tsunamis.
The December quake and tsunami left around 300,000 people dead or missing, mostly in Indonesia's Aceh province but also in India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Maldives and east Africa.