A magnitude 7.3 earthquake struck west of Indonesia’s Sumatra island on Tuesday, prompting Indonesia’s Geophysics Agency (BMKG) to issue a tsunami warning.
The European-Mediterranean Seismological Center (EMSC) had earlier put the quake’s magnitude at 6.9.
The country’s meteorological department said the quake, at a depth of 84 kilometers (52.2 miles), triggered a preliminary tsunami warning. The agency asked local authorities to instruct residents in the affected area to stay away from the coast immediately.
Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency said officials were collecting data from islands closest to the quake’s epicenter, off the west coast of Sumatra, spokesman Abdul Muhri said.
Abdul, who was in Padang, said a strong tremor was felt in Padang, the capital of West Sumatra, and some people moved away from the beaches.
“Although the earthquake here was strong, the damage is not yet visible,” he said.
Akmal, an official on Sumatra’s Mentawai islands, told TVOne that locals were evacuating and moving to higher ground, but there were no reports of casualties so far.
Indonesia suffers frequent earthquakes along the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, a seismically active region where different plates of the Earth’s crust meet.