A massive 7.4-magnitude earthquake jolted the Molucca Sea off the coast of Indonesia's Ternate island early Thursday morning, claiming at least one life and triggering intense, albeit brief, tsunami fears.
The powerful tremor hit at 06:48 local time (22:48 GMT), originating at a depth of 35 kilometers. According to the national news agency Antara, the quake proved fatal for a 70-year-old woman in North Sulawesi who was crushed by falling building debris. In a desperate bid to escape the violent shaking, another resident sustained a broken leg after leaping from a building.
Briefly raising alarms across the Pacific, the Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center cautioned that minor waves could impact the shores of Guam, Japan, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, and Taiwan. Authorities officially stood down the tsunami alert roughly two hours later.
Despite living in a notoriously active seismic zone, locals described Thursday's event as exceptionally terrifying. In Manado, journalist Isvara Safitri reported severe dizziness as furniture and roads violently swayed, noting it was the strongest quake she had felt in over half a decade.
The sheer force of the tremor sent residents fleeing in terror. In the coastal city of Bitung, Yayuk Oktiani recounted chaos at a local market as sudden power outages plunged the area into darkness. She immediately rushed to evacuate her child from a seaside school, describing a frantic scene where teachers urgently dismissed arriving students. Across the water in Ternate, resident Budi Nurgianto observed people sprinting into the streets in such a rush that some had not even finished showering.
Critical infrastructure was also heavily impacted. At Manado’s Siloam Hospital, medical staff and patients—some confined to wheelchairs—were forced into a frantic evacuation. Makeshift triage centers were hastily erected outdoors and inside vehicles as nurses and doctors scrambled to maintain care.
With the epicenter situated roughly midway between Manado and Ternate, the region is now bracing for further instability. At least two notable aftershocks measuring 5.5 and 5.2 have already rattled the area, and emergency officials warn that more seismic activity is likely. Search and rescue teams continue to comb through the wreckage of severely damaged buildings, with footage showing officials navigating rubble at a local sports complex as they assess the full scale of the destruction.