BMKG earthquake and tsunami director Wijayanto said: “Tsunami modelling results indicate that this earthquake has the potential to generate a tsunami in the provinces of East Nusa Tenggara, South Sulawesi, and West Nusa Tenggara.”
Residents in coastal areas were being told to seek higher ground.
An alert was issued for waves ranging from 0.5 metres to three metres.
Residents in the town of Maumere on Flores Island, about 2400km away, were evacuating to higher ground, an AFP correspondent saw.
He said the sea in the area could be seen receding, a common phenomenon ahead of a possible tsunami.
Images broadcast on Indonesian television showed hundreds of people in nearby Nagekeo regency evacuating the area as well as damaged buildings.
Authorities have not reported any casualties but said tsunami waves between 19cm and 30cm had been detected.
Indonesia and neighbouring countries experience frequent earthquakes due to their location in the Pacific Ring of Fire – an arc of intense seismic activity stretching from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.
Among Indonesia’s history of deadly quakes is a devastating 9.1 tremor in 2004 that struck off the coast of Sumatra and triggered a tsunami that killed 220,000 throughout the region, including about 170,000 in Indonesia.
The Boxing Day tragedy was one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history.
In 2018, a powerful quake shook the island of Lombok and several more tremors followed over the next couple of weeks, killing more than 550 people on the holiday island and neighbouring Sumbawa.
Later that year, a 7.5 quake and a subsequent tsunami in Palu on Sulawesi island left more than 4300 people dead or missing.
– AFP
