ASIATODAY.ID, JAKARTA – Geological scientists have identified 75 active faults along Java Island which have the potential to cause earthquake shocks again in the future.
“As many as 50 percent of the population lives on the island of Java. This means that we need to protect the people who live on the island of Java,” said BRIN Geological Disaster Research Center Researcher Nuraini Rahmah Hanifa, quoted Thursday, April 4 2024.
Based on the 2017 earthquake map, the number of faults on Java Island was recorded as 31 active faults and the total for all of Indonesia at that time reached 295 active faults.
Based on the latest data update in 2024, the number of active faults on the island of Java has reached 75 points and the total throughout Indonesia is 400 active faults.
Nuraini said that active faults whose parameters are well known are less than 30 percent. According to him, the number of 75 faults indicates that it is not an increase in active faults but an increase in human knowledge.
Over the last seven years, scientists have succeeded in discovering new faults that were previously unknown due to technological and scientific limitations.
“For example, if there was no Cianjur earthquake, maybe we would forget that there was a Cianjur earthquake, meaning we have not forgotten the Cianjur earthquake well,” said Nuraini.
The earthquake disaster in Cianjur, West Java, which occurred in 2022, was not the first time it rocked the area. In 1897, an earthquake also rocked the Cianjur area and damaged various buildings in that area.
In Indonesia from 2000 to 2018, the number of victims who died due to natural disasters reached 185,677 people. Indonesia is one of the countries with the largest number of natural disaster victims during the period 2000 to 2018.
Indonesia’s very active tectonic activity causes this country to be rocked by an average of 2,000 earthquakes every year with a strength of over 4.5 magnitude.
Nuraini further said that around 206 million Indonesians or 77 percent of the total population could experience earthquake shocks with an intensity of VI MMI. Then, as many as 4.1 million people lived on the fault.
“Conducting active fault research is not easy, especially since Java has a large population. Even though geological (research) requires digging (land). If you have a lot of houses, it’s also difficult (to do research),” he concluded. (ANT)
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