'Hidden Threats': Indonesia's Bandung Quake Caused by Unmapped Fault, Experts Say

JAKARTA: A sudden earthquake that struck West Java on Wednesday (September 18) that killed one person and injured more than 80 others was caused by an unidentified fault on the map, seismologists in Indonesia said.

The head of the Indonesian National Disaster Management Agency's Disaster Data, Information and Communication Center, Abdul Muhari, said on Thursday that researchers initially expected the quake to hit two active faults in West Java.

But when the map was drawn, it turned out that it had been made on a mistake that had not been drawn beforehand.

“There are two parts of the Garsila fault, and the distribution of the first earthquake and aftershocks is neither on the active Garsila fault, nor on the Lembang fault,” Abdul was quoted as saying by Antara news agency.

A 5.0-magnitude earthquake in Bandung damaged hundreds of homes, caused losses of 385 billion rupiah ($25 million) and displaced more than 700 people, the West Java regional disaster agency said.

The epicenter of the earthquake was 25 kilometers southeast of Bandung and at a depth of 10 kilometers.

Indonesia is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries because it lies at the junction of three tectonic plates, known as the Ring of Fire.

A major earthquake, possibly followed by a tsunami, is inevitable in Indonesia, scientists say, due to movement on the megathrust zone, the area where two large plates meet.

“It can be said that earthquakes in these two sectors are just a matter of time because hundreds of years have passed since a major earthquake occurred,” said Mr. Daryono, head of the Indonesian Meteorology and Climatology Agency’s earthquake and tsunami center, in an August post on X about the two major earthquakes in Sumatra and Java.

Like many Indonesians, Mr. Dariano uses one name.

Efforts are still underway to map active faults in Indonesia to plan appropriate disaster mitigation strategies.

Active faults are faults that have moved or caused earthquakes within the past 10,000 years.

The 2017 Indonesian earthquake map showed 295 active faults across Indonesia, 31 of them on Java, the country's most populous island, said Nuraini Rahmat Hanifah, a researcher at the National Research and Innovation Agency (Bren) in April.

Thanks to better technology, scientists were able to discover additional active faults that had not been mapped before in 2024. Currently, there are more than 400 active faults in Indonesia, 75 of which are located on the island of Java.

“Of these samples, less than 30% have known parameters,” Ms Noraini was quoted as saying by the BRIN newspaper on its website in April.

In Indonesia, several unexpected earthquakes have occurred due to faults that were not recorded on maps. One of the largest of these was the earthquake that struck Cianjur, West Java, in 2022, which killed about 600 people and damaged about 58,000 homes.

Mr. Abdul of the National Disaster Management Agency said the Bandung earthquake had become a serious concern for the agency to study active fault points that had not been mapped to reduce the number of casualties.

Ms. Noraini explained that by accurately mapping faults and appropriate disaster mitigation strategies, the government can narrow down disaster-prone areas and use the map data as the basis for disaster mitigation policies.

However, she admits that mapping active faults is no easy task, especially in places like Java that are already densely populated.

“Geological research requires digging the ground, and if there are many houses, it makes the research more difficult,” said Ms. Nourini.

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