Undersea earth quake shakes Indonesia's capital Jakarta

The U.S. Geological Survey and witnesses announced that a strong undersea earthquake shook Indonesia's capital early Thursday, shaking homes and tall buildings greatly and making panicked residents rush into the streets. There were no immediate reports of damage.

Photo: Undersea earth quake shakes Indonesia's capital Jakarta

The temblor had a preliminary magnitude of 7.5 and was centered 110 kilometers (66 miles) east of Jakarta at a depth of 290 kilometers (180 miles), the agency said.

Residents said tall buildings and single story homes shook violently in the city of 9 million people.

El-Shinta radio reported that the quake could be felt from Sumatra island in the west to Bali to the east, but that there were no immediate reports of damage.

Because of the earthquake's depth, there was little risk of a tsunami, said Robert Cessaro, a geophysicist at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii.

None of the instruments closest to the earthquake indicated that a tsunami was triggered, Cessaro said, although he added that there were no instruments "very close" to the quake's epicenter.

The depth of the earthquake "suggests there will be no tsunami," he said.

The Dec. 26, 2004, earthquake that triggered the tsunami off the coast of Sumatra and killed more than 131,000 in Indonesia's Aceh province was just 30 kilometers (18 miles) in depth, according to the USGS.

Indonesia, the world's largest archipelago, is prone to seismic upheaval due to its location on the so-called Pacific "Ring of Fire," an arc of volcanos and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.