Two moderate earthquakes shook Indonesia regions on Monday, November 2, 2026, hours apart and on different island chains, according to United States Geological Survey (USGS) data carried by seismic trackers. The first struck the Banda Sea area in the early hours, and the second struck near Tomohon in North Sulawesi later in the morning, both at magnitudes in the low 5s and both at intermediate to deep focal depths.
The Banda Sea event was recorded at 00:53 UTC on Monday at magnitude 5.1, with a depth reported as 85.7 kilometres by one tracker and 93.5 kilometres by another, reflecting the routine revision that follows an initial USGS listing. Its epicentre was given as about 6.97 degrees south, 129.94 degrees east. The Tomohon event followed at 08:13 UTC, at magnitude 5.3 according to Quakewire, or magnitude 5.1 in a second USGS-derived listing, about 19 kilometres west-northwest of Tomohon, at a depth of about 196.6 kilometres in the deeper listing and 148 kilometres in the Quakewire listing.
Shaking felt, no damage verified
The depth of both events matters for how they were experienced. Deep and intermediate-depth earthquakes spread their energy over a wider area but usually produce weaker surface shaking than a shallow event of the same magnitude. For the Tomohon event, shaking was reported as intensity II to III — barely felt to weak — in Ternate and Minahasa, Quakewire reported. For the Banda Sea event, no felt reports had been received in the listings checked, and for the Tanimbar-area event also listed for 00:53 UTC at magnitude 5.5 and 130 kilometres depth, shaking was reported as intensity II in Saumlaki, barely felt.
No verified damage report or tsunami warning was attached to any of these listings in the sources checked, and readers should not infer damage from magnitude alone. Indonesia sits across several tectonic plate boundaries and records moderate earthquakes frequently; the country’s meteorology and geophysics agency, BMKG, publishes its own shakemaps for events felt on land, and official updates supersede tracker summaries if figures are revised.
Why figures differ between trackers
The small differences in magnitude and depth between trackers for the same events are normal in the first hours after an earthquake. Different agencies and automated systems pick slightly different arrival times from seismic stations, and USGS itself revises its listings as more data arrive — Quakewire noted that the Tomohon figures had already been revised once since the first report. The verified core is consistent across sources: two to three moderate events in Indonesian waters and on Sulawesi on Monday morning UTC, at depths that limited surface shaking, with only weak shaking reported where any was reported at all. If BMKG or USGS issues a revised location, magnitude or felt report, that update should replace the initial figures in this story.
