Updated April 2, 2026 — AP
An undersea magnitude-7.4 earthquake struck the Molucca Sea on Thursday, toppling buildings in parts of northern Indonesia, sending residents into the streets, killing at least one person and generating a small tsunami.
Monitoring stations recorded waves of roughly 30 inches above normal tide levels about a half-hour after the quake. Indonesia’s meteorological agency later lifted its tsunami warning, and the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said the event posed no destructive threat to the Philippines, which lies north of the epicenter.
Indonesia’s Disaster Management Agency said strong shaking lasting about 10 to 20 seconds was widely felt in Bitung in North Sulawesi province and in Ternate in neighboring North Maluku province. Early surveys reported light to severe damage in parts of Ternate, including a church and two houses, while damage assessments were ongoing in Bitung.
Rescue officials said a 70-year-old woman died when a building collapsed in Manado, North Sulawesi, and another person was injured there. In Ternate, at least three people with injuries were hospitalized. Videos released by the search and rescue agency and television footage showed damaged structures and people rushing outdoors and gathering in streets to avoid falling debris.
Nearly 50 aftershocks were reported in nearby areas following the main tremor.
The U.S. Geological Survey located the powerful quake in the Molucca Sea region northeast of Indonesia. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Honolulu warned that small waves were possible in Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Papua New Guinea, but said there was no tsunami threat to Hawaii, Guam or other more distant islands.
Residents described sudden, intense shaking. “We had just woken up and suddenly the earthquake hit… we all ran out of the house,” Bitung resident Marten Mandagi said, adding that while the shaking was strong he had not seen damage in his neighborhood.
Indonesia, an archipelago of more than 280 million people, sits on major seismic faults along the Pacific “Ring of Fire” and frequently experiences earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Past disasters include a magnitude-5.6 quake that killed at least 602 people in Cianjur, West Java, in 2022; the 2018 Sulawesi quake and tsunami that killed more than 4,300; and the 2004 Indian Ocean quake and tsunami that killed over 230,000 people across a dozen countries, the majority in Indonesia’s Aceh province.