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JAKARTA, Indonesia – As the number of flood-related casualties continued to rise in Indonesia, the disaster-prone archipelago was struck by a strong earthquake.

At 5.12 pm local time on Saturday, a 6.6 magnitude earthquake rocked the Maluku province in eastern Indonesia.

Indonesia’s Meteorology and Geophysics Agency said that the strong quake rocked the Aru Islands in Maluku.

Wahyu Kurniawan, who heads the agency said that the quake that hit at 15:12 p.m. Jakarta time (0812 GMT), was initially measured at 6.6. magnitude, but was later leveled down to 6.2 magnitude.

He said, “We have not issued a warning for tsunami so far.”

The epicenter of the shallow undersea quake was detected northwest off the coast of Dobo, which is the center of the archipelagic regency.

The quake was felt at a depth of 10 kilometers and the agency said that the tremors were felt as far away as Timika, Papua.

According to the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB), the quake shook some buildings and prompted residents to run out of their homes in Dobo.

BNPB said that two buildings were damaged, but confirmed that no injuries or casualties were reported due to the quake.

A hospital and a house was believed to have suffered damage and some residents said that the quake lasted nearly ten seconds.

Battered: Floods, landslides, tornado

On Sunday, authorities in Indonesia updated the death toll in the flood-battered Sulawesi Island.

Indonesia’s National Board for Disaster Management said that at least 68 people had been killed on the island in the past week.

Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, the spokesman of the agency said that the death toll from the floods, landslides and tornado on the island rose to 68, while nearly 7,000 people have taken refuse in emergency shelters on the island.

Nugroho added that 47 people had suffered injuries and that rescue operations were ongoing.

He said that separate teams were looking for at least 25 people missing in the devastation caused by a dam that overflowed after heavy rains in Southern Sulawesi over the past week.

He said that the number of the evacuees had doubled from Friday since rescue officials had managed to get access to previously isolated districts.

The agency said that that more than 5,000 homes, scores of bridges, schools and places of worship had been submerged and damaged by the floods and landslides.

Nugroho said that thousands of acres of rice paddies had been destroyed in the disaster.

The Agency said that heavy equipment would be needed to clear the thick layer of mud around the roads and houses in several areas.

Nugroho also pointed out that several people that were displaced remained in camps and there was an urgent need for food, blankets and medical services.

The agency said that 106 villages were affected in South Sulawesi and about 3,481 people had been displaced.

Weather officials in the country have said that continuous rain is forecast for the remainder of the month and more floods were anticipated in several parts.

String of disasters

The disaster-prone archipelago suffered its deadliest year in more than a decade in 2018.

Straddling the geological disaster zone in the Pacific called the Ring of Fire, Indonesia suffered due to a series of earthquakes, volcanos and tsunamis last year that killed over 3,000 people through the year.

In September last year, thousands died in a quake-tsunami disaster around Palu city on Sulawesi island.

A volcano-triggered tsunami off the west coast of Java in December 2018 killed about 430 people and left at least 159 others missing.

The tsunami evoked memories of the Indian Ocean tsunami triggered by a massive earthquake on December 26, 2004, which killed 226,000 people in 14 countries, including more than 120,000 in Indonesia.

The series of fragile fault lines that form the Ring of Fire stretch 25,000 miles from New Zealand, across the east coast of Asia through Indonesia, the Philippines and Japan, over to Alaska, Canada and the U.S. West Coast then down to the southern tip of South America.

Overall, the Ring of Fire contains 452 volcanoes and several tectonic plates in the earth’s crust and more than half of the world’s active volcanoes above sea level are part of the ring.

Indonesia sits atop this arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific Basin – making it more prone to frequent seismic and volcanic activity.