JAKARTA, Indonesia — A powerful earthquake rattled northeastern Indonesia today, briefly triggering a tsunami alert and sending panicked residents fleeing from homes and buildings, officials said.
The quake had a preliminary magnitude of 6.6 and struck 55 miles beneath the Molucca Sea, the U.S. Geological Survey said. Indonesia’s seismological agency put the magnitude at 7.6 and immediately issued a tsunami alert on radio and television. It was revoked one hour later after the threat had passed.
Residents in the Maluku capital of Ternate, which was closest to the epicenter, fled from buildings as the earth rumbled beneath them.
“I ran out of the hotel with other guests, and we fled to high ground,” Benyamin Otte said. “I could see people on the beach, checking to see if there were any signs of a tsunami, but everything looked normal.”
Jimmy Rimba Rogi, the mayor of Manado, a city on nearby Sulawesi Island, said the quake caused panic there as well, but there were no immediate signs of casualties or damage.
Indonesia is prone to seismic upheaval due to its location on the so-called Ring of Fire, an arc of volcanos and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.
In Japan, a magnitude 7 quake hit off the coast of the northern island of Hokkaido early today, triggering a small tsunami that apparently caused no injuries or damage, Japan’s Meteorological Agency said. The quake struck at a depth of about 12 miles, and a 4-inch tsunami rippled at the shore about 35 minutes later.
