Watching For Quakes In World's Most Densely Populated Fault Zone

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JAKARTA (Reuters) - "Within minutes of the ground shaking in Bali, a red star flashes onto a computer screen in the Indonesian capital, pinpointing the epicenter of an earthquake 80 miles southwest of the tourist island. Data begins to roll onto the screen in front of Fauzi, chief of the engineering seismology and tsunami division of the Meteorological and Geophysical Agency in Jakarta.

It's toward the lower end of the Richter scale, the bespectacled U.S.-educated geophysicist explains. A mild jolt that brings no reports of damage, although sometimes those can take a long time to come from Indonesia's 17,000 islands.

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Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous country, is one of the most earthquake-prone places on Earth. Converging tectonic plates have created a 1,800 mile spine of volcanoes running through the country. More than 100 are active. "Right now in the world we don't have a good technique for predicting earthquakes. The plan is to inform people about the right way to evacuate and how to minimize the impact... We urge people to prepare themselves for the worst."


"In many cases the casualties are not because of the earthquakes, but the collapse of the buildings and tidal waves." In December 1992, an earthquake measuring 7.5 on the Richter scale triggered a tsunami wave killing nearly 2,000 people on the island of Flores, east of Bali."

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