The magnitude-5.7 earthquake struck at 7.20am local time (1.20am BST) southeast of Bali’s capital city, Denpasar. The temblor struck as a depth of 150 miles (95km), which is deep enough to avoid major damage and no tsunami warning has been issued. However, the quake was felt on the popular tourist island, with roof tiles falling off buildings and some temples damaged.
No casualties have been reported but there have been reports of people panicking at the duration of the quake.
Footage of the aftermath shows Denpasar’s Lokantha temple surrounded by smashed stonework.
Indonesia’s meteorology and geophysics agency said the earthquake was also felt in other cities on the neighbouring islands of Lombok and Java.
A roof of a mosque in the city of Banyuwangi in East Java also partially collapsed.
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Are aftershocks expected?
No aftershocks have been recorded by the US Geological Survey (USGS) since the quake.
However, when it comes to Indonesia, the risk of further earthquakes is ever-present due to its location on the ‘Ring of Fire’.
What is the Ring of Fire?
The Ring of Fire is a massive horseshoe-shaped ring encircling the Pacific basin made up of a string of volcanoes and seismic activity.
Indonesia, an island archipelago made up of more than 17,000 volcanic islands, is part of this.
The Ring of Fire is a result of the earth’s oceanic plates and continental plates interacting, which has led to the massive activity which is associated with the area.
About 90 percent of all earthquakes occur along the Ring of Fire, which is dotted with 75 percent of all the active volcanoes on earth.
A string of 452 volcanoes stretches from the southern tip of South America, up the coast of the Americas, across the Bering Strait, down through Japan and into New Zealand.
In total, the ring forms a 25,000-mile arc from the boundary of the Pacific Plate, to the Cocos and Nazca Plates that line the edge of the Pacific Ocean.
The ring is the result of tectonic plates – huge slabs of the earth’s crust which fit together like a puzzle to make up the earth’s surface.
The plates are not fixed, but constantly moving on top of a layer of solid and molten (liquid) rock, called the earth’s mantle.
Sometimes, these plates collide, move apart, or slide against each other, which results in an earthquake.
The volcanoes form when one plate is pushed under another into the mantle through a process known as subduction.
This releases pressure, causing the molten rock to push up through the earth.