2004 Alor earthquake
Earthquake in Indonesia
On 12 November 2004, at 05:26:41 WITA (21:26:41 UTC, 11 November), a moment magnitude (Mw) 7.5 earthquake struck the Alor Archipelago in East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia. The island of Alor was devastated by the earthquake, with 17,500 of the 36,300 homes on the island damaged or destroyed. At least 34 fatalities, 400 injuries and 30 missing were recorded on the island.
Tectonic setting
Alor island is of volcanic origin, forming part of the Banda Arc, which was formed by the subduction of the Australian plate beneath the Eurasian plate. Currently the Banda Arc is involved in the early stages of an Arc-Continent collision, as continental crust of the Australian plate becomes involved in this boundary. Several microplates have been formed, including the Banda Sea plate and the Timor plate. The boundary between these two microplates is a north-dipping subduction zone, movement on which has caused large earthquakes in the past, including the 1991 Kalabahi earthquakes that resulted in 23 fatalities.
Earthquake
The earthquake occurred as a result of shallow thrust faulting on or near the convergent boundary between the Banda Sea plate to the north and the Timor plate to the south. Focal mechanism solutions indicate that rupture occurred on either a steep, near-vertical reverse fault or on a shallow, southward-dipping thrust fault. A rupture area of 95 km (59 mi) x 80 km (50 mi) was estimated, with a maximum slip of 3.9349 m (12.910 ft) north of the hypocenter.
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This entry incorporates text from “2004 Alor earthquake” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.