Sumedang Earthquake Allegedly Earthquake Recurrence On August 14, 1955

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JAKARTA - The Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) said that the Sumedang earthquake which occurred at the end of 2023 was suspected to be a repeat of the earthquake on August 14, 1955.

"Don't forget history, in seismology we know the concept of a return period or a repeat period of the earthquake, that an earthquake that has occurred somewhere, one day it will happen again," said Head of the BMKG Earthquake and Tsunami Center, Daryono in the webinar "Sumedang Earthquake Complete M4.8 December 31, 2023" in Jakarta reported by ANTARA, Thursday, January 11.

The Sumedang earthquake gave a message for people to study the history of past earthquakes in their respective areas.

"It could be that one day an earthquake will occur again approaching a place that we consider safe because ignorance of the history of the earthquake destroys the past," he said.

Daryono said the earthquake's re-period also gave a message of the importance of preparedness (preparedness) for earthquake disasters that may occur in the future.

The Sumedang earthquake, he continued, was triggered by activities of active faults that had not been mapped.

In this case, the Sumedang earthquake resembled the Solok M5.3 earthquake in 2019, the Ambon M6.5 earthquake (2019), the Flores Sea Kalatoa earthquake M7.4 (2021), the Central Sulawesi Ampana earthquake M6.5 (2021), and the Cianjur earthquake M5.6 (2022).

"Gempa Sumedang has become a human interest related to the name of the earthquake generation fault. Data on the relocation of BMKG earthquake hypocenters shows that seismicity clusters tend to be North-South direction, crossing Sumedang City," he said.

According to Daryono, the Sumedang earthquake resembled a number of cities that were traversed by active fault routes such as Palu (Sesar Palu-Koro), Sorong (Sesar Sorong), Aceh (Sesar Aceh), Gorontalo (Sesar Gorontalo), Semarang (Sesar Semarang), and Lembang (Sesar Lembang).

"The name of the active fault refers to the name of the risky place so that it will provide a message of preparedness and education on earthquake mitigation for the local community," he said.

Previously, the Head of BMKG Dwikorita Karnawati said that BMKG identified a new fault that caused the earthquake in Sumedang, West Java, on December 31, 2023.

"Paying attention to the distribution of aftershocks, tectonic order, and analysis of the source mechanism, the earthquake was caused by an active fault passing through Sumedang City which had not previously been mapped according to the analysis of BMKG seismicity data, so it was called the Sumedang Fault," said Dwikorita.