West Manggarai Becomes The Only Region In NTT That Has 5 Earthquake Shelters

Head of Komodo Meteorological Station West Manggarai Sti Nenotek (ANTARA)

KUPANG - The Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) has built five earthquake shelters in West Manggarai, East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) that have a seismograph sensor to measure vibrations that occur on the earth's surface.

"West Manggarai has five earthquake shelters, namely three shelters that have been installed with seismograph sensors in 2021 and two shelters whose equipment will be installed in 2022", said Head of the West Manggarai Komodo Meteorological Station, Sti Nenotek in Labuan Bajo, Antara on Monday, December 20.

A total of three shelters or buildings for sensor placement that has been installed in West Manggarai are located in Kuwus District, Labuan Bajo City, and Golo Mori Village. Meanwhile, two other shelters that have been built and will be installed with sensors in 2022 are shelters on Komodo Island and Lembor District.

Sti said West Manggarai is the only district in the NTT region that has many seismograph sensors. This tool is needed because of the wide area of West Manggarai and a tourism area.

The installation of earthquake detection equipment in each shelter is to tighten the equipment to further increase the speed and accuracy of earthquake occurrences. If there are more tools, earthquake detection can be known quickly, both the time of the incident, the magnitude of the earthquake, the location of the earthquake, and other earthquake-related information.

When contacted separately, the Deputy Regent of West Manggarai, Yulianus Weng, expressed his appreciation for BMKG's efforts in providing guarantees of comfort to the people of West Manggarai and visiting tourists.

The installation of various tools, especially earthquake shelters, is a disaster mitigation effort in carrying out comfort protocols in these super-priority areas.

"Once there is an earthquake, we already know, so that anticipatory steps can be taken quickly", he said.

As an active seismic area, the results of BMKG monitoring show that the West Manggarai region, namely Labuan Bajo and its surroundings, has a fairly high seismic activity which can be seen from the seismicity map. Based on BMKG records, Labuan Bajo is an area that is prone to earthquakes and tsunamis, both from the aspect of the earthquake source and from the historical aspect.

Based on the aspect of the earthquake source, Labuan Bajo is located close to the source of the Flores rising fault/Flores rising fault with a targeted magnitude of 7.5. Furthermore, West Manggarai is adjacent to the Sumba Segment Megathrust Zone earthquake source which has a targeted magnitude of 8.3.

Historically, the waters of Labuan Bajo in West Manggarai and Komodo experienced two tsunamis, namely on November 28, 1836, and April 14, 1855.