Earthquakes may be quite common in Indonesia, an archipelagic country on the Pacific Ocean's dangerous Ring of Fire, but they never cease to surprise and alarm.
The coffee table that came with our rented apartment had always been quite wobbly, but there seemed to be no reason for it to suddenly start swaying back and forth all by itself. I needed a second to realize it wasn’t just the table moving, but the whole living room and, consequently, the entire building.
I was experiencing my fourth earthquake in Indonesia in five years.
This earthquake initially registered as being quite strong, but it fortunately caused little damage and few fatalities. However, it did seem to go on for an inordinate length of time, but maybe that was because our apartment was on the 11th floor of a medium-rise building. Momentum possible kept the structure swaying even after the actual ground trembles had stopped.
As initially reported by television news and several seismic monitoring agencies online, such as Indonesia’s Meteorological, Climatological and Geophysical Agency, a magnitude-7.4 quake had struck at a relatively shallow depth of 52 kilometers between the Enggano Basin and Sunda Trough off the coast of Banten, a province in the southwest corner of the island of Java, at about 7 p.m. on August 2.
That magnitude would indicate it had been a seriously strong quake, along the lines of one that rattled New Zealand two months ago, but it still seemed below the threshold of a seismic shift that causes widespread and extensive damage. Indeed, within a few hours – as often happens – a reassessment downgraded the quake to magnitude-6.9.
However, that still made it strong enough to cause panic hundreds of kilometers away in the capital city Jakarta – where our apartment is located – and be felt in the distant cities of Bandung and Yogyakarta. It was also strong enough to spark fear of a tsunami, which have been extremely deadly in Indonesia, resulting in warnings that waves as much as three meters high could hit shorelines near the seabed epicenter. Luckily, none formed and the alert was lifted a couple of hours later.
Naturally, while the damage caused in Jakarta was minor – mostly appearing in the form of new hairline cracks in the walls of buildings – it was worse the closer you got to Java’s southwest coast. As many as 200 buildings were reported to have been damaged in Banten to various degrees, although none were destroyed. More seriously, at least five people died during or right after the earthquake – most apparently because of heart attacks, but one from falling while fleeing.
That, of course, raises the question of what to do when an earthquake strikes – not only to minimize injury and death from the event itself, but from how people react to it. Education on the subject is badly needed here. Indonesia is hardly a stranger to these violent ground movements; several occur every year in all parts of the country and some are so extremely devastating that they cause dozens if not hundreds of deaths. Fortunately, none of the earthquakes I have experienced have come anywhere near that kind of magnitude, but that does not mean the danger does not exist.
A lot of advice is available about what to do when the tremors start. If indoors, stay away from windows and doorways, take shelter under a sturdy table or by a strong wall, cover your head and remain in place until the movement stops. If already outside, find an open area and stay there. In a minor quake, like the one that played with my coffee table, many of the injuries and fatalities can occur after it is over and when people are fleeing in panicked crowds.
The best response, therefore, is to always (forgive the quoting of an increasingly overused phrase) “Keep calm and carry on.”
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