November 22, 2022: A powerful earthquake struck Indonesia’s main island of Java on Monday, killing at least 162 people, injuring hundreds more and shaking tall buildings in the capital, Jakarta.

The magnitude 5.6 earthquake which struck near the city of Cianjur, caused the collapse of hundreds of buildings and triggered landslides that prevented many people from reaching the city’s main hospital.

Emergency workers and others scrambled overnight to find people trapped in the debris. But rescue efforts were hampered because the hospital itself was damaged and had lost electrical power.

Many people are believed to be still trapped beneath the rubble, leading to fears that the death toll would increase rapidly.

The Indonesian National Disaster Mitigation Agency reported that the earthquake destroyed around 343 buildings and damaged many others, including some government offices, schools and religious houses.

The U.S. Geological Survey said Monday’s quake occurred in a subduction zone, an area where one of the planet’s large crustal plates, in this case the Australian, is sliding beneath another, the Sundan. The process is very slow and the two plates are moving with respect to each other at a rate of two inches a year. But as in all subduction zones around the world, the movement builds frictional stresses between the two plates that result in frequent earthquakes.

In the past 15 years there have been four quakes of magnitude 6.5 or larger in the subduction zone within 150 miles of Monday’s earthquake, the survey said. The largest was in 2007, which at magnitude 7.5 released 700 times the energy of Monday’s quake. But it occurred at a depth of 175 miles, and there were no reports of damage or injuries.

Monday’s quake was the latest in a series of recent disasters that have befallen Indonesia. In February, a magnitude 6.2 earthquake killed at least 25 people and injured more than 450 others in West Sumatra. In January 2021 a magnitude 6.2 earthquake killed more than 100 people and injured nearly 6,500 people in West Sulawesi.

According to the Indonesia Disaster Risk Index Cianjur district is one of the most dangerous areas in Indonesia, suffering frequent floods, landslides and droughts as well as earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions.