Indonesia's Sumatra Checks for Damage from 6.3 Magnitude Earthquake

KOMPAS.com - Indonesia's disaster agency is assessing the impact of a strong earthquake that hit off the southern coast of Sumatra island late Tuesday, Aug. 23, it said in a statement, noting there had been no reports of damage or casualties by near midnight.

The 6.3 magnitude quake struck at 21:31 local time, the country's meteorology and geophysics agency (BMKG) said, with its epicenter 80 kilometers south of the town of Manna in Bengkulu province, at a depth of 52 kilometers.

Manna is about 600 kilometers northwest of the capital Jakarta.

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The tremor was felt for two to six seconds by residents along the southern coastline of Sumatra, prompting some to run out of their homes, disaster agency BNPB said in a statement.

"It was quite strong," a Bengkulu agency official, Septi, said.

Indonesia straddles the so-called "Pacific Ring of Fire," a seismically active zone where different plates on the Earth's crust meet and create a large number of earthquakes and volcanoes.

In February, a magnitude 6.1 earthquake killed more than 10 people when it struck inland near the western coast of Sumatra.

Source: Reuters