Over 60 people dead in the Indonesian earthquake

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A 5.6-magnitude earthquake killed more than 60 people and injured hundreds in Indonesia's West Java province on 21 November 2022. However the death toll is likely to rise further as many are still trapped under the rubbles.

The epicentre was near the town of Cianjur in West Java, about 75 km (45 miles) southeast of the capital, Jakarta.

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

In 2004, a 9.1 magnitude quake off Sumatra Island in northern Indonesia triggered a tsunami that struck 14 countries, killing 226,000 people along the Indian Ocean coastline, more than half of them in Indonesia.

Earthquake

Earthquakes happen when the plates of the earth collide with each other. The earth's lithosphere consists of 7 major plates and they float over the molten surface of the upper mantle. When they collide energy waves are released which causes vibration on the surface of the Earth known as Earthquake.

The location below the earth’s surface where the earthquake starts is called the hypocenter, and the location directly above it on the surface of the earth is called the epicenter.

Earthquakes are recorded by instruments called seismographs. The recording they make is called a seismogram. 

The scale for measuring earthquakes is called the Richter scale. It is a mathematical scale used to measure the intensity of earthquake waves. It ranges from 0 to 9. However it can be more than 9.