BMKG Chief: It Will Take Decades for a Devastating Earthquake to Recur in NTT
The Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) has responded to the anxiety currently gripping the people of East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) regarding the threat of a massive earthquake.
BMKG Chief Teuku Faisal Fathani has urged residents not to panic. He stated that an earthquake as powerful as magnitude (M) 7.7 will not occur again in the near future.
Teuku Faisal explained that the movement of tectonic plates in the region requires a very long process to trigger a similar tremor again.
“It must be confirmed that it will take up to decades for the Flores back-arc thrust fault to accumulate energy and produce an earthquake as large as the one that occurred recently,” Teuku Faisal told reporters at the Parliament Complex in Senayan, Central Jakarta, on Wednesday, 19 August 2026.
Nevertheless, Teuku Faisal did not deny the fact that the potential for future earthquakes will always loom over NTT. However, he reiterated that the energy accumulation of the fault does not occur within a matter of days or months.
“It could be larger or smaller, so a long period of time is indeed required,” he said.
On that occasion, he also presented the results of the latest seismic data update. As of Wednesday afternoon, BMKG instruments were still recording thousands of aftershock activities following the main earthquake.
“The number of aftershocks as of 17.00 WIB this afternoon, 19 August 2026, was recorded at 3,055. The largest aftershock was magnitude 6.2 and the smallest was M 1.1,” he explained.
Of the thousands of aftershocks, BMKG recorded that dozens were felt quite strongly by residents on land. Teuku predicted that it would take up to nearly a month for the tectonic conditions in the NTT region to return to normal and stabilise.
“The number of earthquakes felt by the public was 88. Regarding the decay process, because the main earthquake was quite large, namely M 7.7, the decrease in earthquake activity will take approximately 3 to 4 weeks,” he concluded.