Our personnel are still monitoring (the situation) on the field. We have not yet received a report of damageMeulaboh, Aceh (ANTARA) - A magnitude-5.2 earthquake hit the West Aceh district capital of Meulaboh on Thursday afternoon, though no tsunami warning was issued, according to the Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency (BMKG).
"The quake did not have the potential to trigger a tsunami," Rezky P. Hartiwi, spokesman for the BMKG Station for Meulaboh-Nagan Raya, stated.
The quake, centered 22 kilometers southwest of Meulaboh, was felt in West Aceh, Nagan Raya, and part of Aceh Jaya, he revealed.
Hartiwi urged local residents to not panic but remain vigilant to the likelihood of aftershocks.
Chief of the West Aceh Disaster Mitigation Office (BPBD) Mukhtaruddin noted that the office had yet to receive a report of damage caused by the quake.
"Our personnel are still monitoring (the situation) on the field. We have not yet received a report of any damage," he noted.
A quake of magnitude 5.2 can cause substantial damage to land.
The westernmost Indonesian province of Aceh bore the brunt of a magnitude-9.1 quake and subsequent tsunami on December 26, 2004, leading to hundreds of thousands of people losing their lives and going missing.
Indonesia is located on the geographically active “Pacific Ring of Fire” and holds some 40 percent of the world's geothermal reserves.
The Ring of Fire, or the Circum-Pacific belt, is the world’s greatest earthquake belt, according to Live Science, owing to fault lines running from Chile to Japan and Southeast Asia.
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Translator: T Dedi Iskandar/Suharto
Editor: Sri Haryati
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