EARTHQUAKEM5.7

M5.7 earthquake near Tual, Indonesia

Map: the earthquake near Tual, Indonesia, with plate boundaries

A magnitude 5.7 earthquake struck 271 km (168 mi) west-southwest of Tual, Indonesia on Wednesday, October 28, 2026 at 22:06 UTC, at a depth of 142 km (88 mi), according to the U.S. Geological Survey. At this intermediate depth, shaking spreads out before it reaches the surface. The nearest city of a million or more people is Makassar, about 1,220 km (758 mi) away.

USGS’s PAGER impact estimate is GREEN: little or no damage expected.

MagnitudeM5.7
Depth142 km (88 mi)
Time (UTC)Oct 28 22:06
Location6.32°S 130.40°E
Nearest townTual · 271 km
Energy5 kilotons TNT
Tsunami flagNo
PAGER alertGREEN
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Why here?

This earthquake struck about 220 km (137 mi) from the boundary between the Australian and Timor plates. Most earthquakes happen along plate boundaries like this one, where the pieces of Earth’s outer shell collide, pull apart or grind past each other. Stress builds up over years until the rock suddenly slips. At 142 km down, it most likely broke inside a plate that is sinking into the mantle beneath its neighbor, in what geologists call a subduction zone.

The red lines on the map are plate boundaries.

What kind of fault?

USGS’s analysis of the seismic waves shows it was an oblique earthquake: the fault slipped partly sideways and partly as one block dropped down as the crust stretched.

Shaking and impact

The strongest shaking USGS estimates was intensity 3 on the Modified Mercalli scale: weak. USGS’s PAGER system estimates it most likely caused no deaths (90 percent probability). Early estimates are revised as reports come in.

How strong was it?

Magnitude is logarithmic: each whole step releases about 32 times more energy. This magnitude 5.7 released roughly the energy of 5 kilotons of TNT. That is about 355 times the energy of a magnitude 4.0, a quake people nearby feel but that rarely causes damage. The strongest earthquake ever recorded, magnitude 9.5 in Chile in 1960, released about 500,000 times more than this one.

Earthquake history here

Before this earthquake, USGS had recorded 129 earthquakes of magnitude 6 or larger within 300 km (186 mi) since 1900. The strongest:

Official details, updates and the shaking map: USGS event page.

See every earthquake on October 28, 2026 or earthquakes by day.

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