"Based on our monitoring results from Saturday morning until noon, so far, no damage to public buildings or facilities has been found," head of the West Aceh district BPBD, Mukhtaruddin, said here on Saturday.
Based on the results of coordination with the military, police, disaster resilience team, West Aceh district’s Indonesian Inter-Community Radio (RAPI) volunteers, as well as other related parties in every sub-district in the region, there have been no reports of damage to residential properties, he informed.
Still, the regional agency is monitoring a number of locations to ensure that there is no impact from the disaster.
The community's economic activity in the district ran normally after the earthquake, Mukhtaruddin said.
He appealed to people to stay calm and remain on alert for potential aftershocks.
A 6.4-M earthquake had rattled the district at 3.53 a.m. Western Indonesian Standard Time (WIB) on Saturday.
The epicenter of the quake was located at 3.75 degrees north latitude and 95.97 degrees east longitude, or 46 kilometers (km), in the sea to the southwest of Meulaboh sub-district, West Aceh district, Aceh province, at a depth of 53 km.
Deputy for geophysics at the Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), Suko Prayitno Adi, said that the earthquake was triggered by subduction activity in the Aceh-Andaman Megathrust plate.
It was a shallow quake with a thrust fault mechanism, he informed.
He estimated that the intensity of the quake was IV-V on the Modified Mercalli Intensity (MMI) scale.
The BMKG monitoring results indicated two aftershocks as of 8.10 a.m. WIB: The first one measuring 2.6 in magnitude occurred at 5 a.m. WIB, and the second one measuring 2.7 in magnitude occurred at 5.09 a.m. WIB.
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Translator: Teuku Iskandar, Uyu Liman
Editor: Suharto
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