Earthquake (Indonesia) #1

Overview

In the wake of devastating - and unconnected - earthquakes and tsunamis in Indonesia and Samoa, the BBC News website looks at the so-called Pacific "Ring of Fire" - the zone of major seismic activity which has one of the world's most active fault lines.



Circling the Pacific Basin, on the bottom of the sea bed, lie a dramatic series of volcanic arcs and oceanic trenches.
The zone - known as the "Ring of Fire" - is notorious for frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and coincides with the edges of one of the world's main tectonic plates.

At the edges, one of three things may occur:
• The plates can be moving away from each other, leaving space for new ocean floor
• Some plates are moving towards each other, causing one to submerge beneath the other
• Other boundaries slide past each other without much disturbance.

Parts of the plate boundary that slide past one another in opposite directions - such as the San Andreas Fault - cause minor earthquakes.

But where one oceanic plate collides with and is forced deep into the Earth's interior, the subsumed plate encounters high temperatures and pressures that partially melt solid rock.

Some of this newly-formed magma rises to the Earth's surface and erupts, forming chains of violent volcanoes - like the Ring of Fire.

These narrow plate-boundary sites, known as subduction zones, are also associated with the formation of deep ocean trenches and big earthquakes.

When there is an earthquake under the sea, one side of the ocean floor suddenly drops downward, beneath the top edge of the subducting plate.

The resulting vertical fault will generate a tsunami - much as a wave machine in a swimming pool will generate one.

Strategies applied (In General)

The Indonesian Insurance Association has successfully introduced the
Indonesian Standard Earthquake Insurance Policy to the market. The policy must be used by all general insurance companies operating in Indonesia for the purpose of uniformity.

Policy Coverage
The policy covers loss and/or damage to the insured’s property with or without business interruption as a result of:
• Earthquake shock
• Fire following earthquake
• Volcanic eruption and
• Tsunami