M6.4 Earthquake near Banda Sea — 28 October 2025

Strong earthquakes can cause significant damage in populated areas within roughly 100 km of the epicentre, particularly to older masonry buildings. Landslides and liquefaction become a real risk in susceptible ground.

A magnitude 6.4 earthquake radiates roughly 60,036 tons of TNT equivalent in seismic energy.

The USGS assigns this earthquake a significance score of 633, which meets the USGS threshold of more than 600 for its significant-earthquake list. The ranking combines magnitude with available Did You Feel It responses and PAGER alert level; it is not a direct measurement of damage.

What the magnitude scale actually measures →

The epicentre was located at -6.6774, 130.0040. The closest other recorded event was a magnitude 4.5 earthquake 16 km north-northeast of here on 05 May 2026.

At 144 km this was an intermediate-depth earthquake. Energy from events at this depth spreads out before it reaches the surface, which usually means weaker shaking near the epicentre than a shallow quake of the same magnitude, but shaking felt across a wider area.

This catalogue does not ingest eyewitness responses, so it cannot confirm where this earthquake was felt. Based on magnitude alone, an event this size can produce strong, widely felt shaking. Its intermediate depth normally reduces peak shaking near the epicentre compared with a shallow event of the same magnitude.

Read more on how focal depth changes what you feel →

The USGS record does not carry a link to NOAA tsunami information. That field is not an all-clear and does not state whether a tsunami occurred. In this case, a damaging tsunami would be less likely because at M6.4 it falls below the magnitude 6.5 threshold that generally applies before a submarine earthquake displaces enough water to generate a damaging tsunami; its 144 km focal depth is too great to deform the sea floor significantly. For an active coastal alert, use tsunami.gov or your local warning authority.

How earthquakes generate tsunamis, and what the alert levels mean →

3 further earthquakes have been recorded within about 150 km of the epicentre in the seven days after this event, the largest of them magnitude 4.4.

251 earthquakes of magnitude 4 or above have been logged within roughly 200 km of this epicentre in our catalogue. The strongest was a magnitude 6.7 event near Tual on 14 July 2025. This M6.4 event released about 2.8 times less energy than that event.

How long aftershock sequences last, and how large they get →

This earthquake is part of the October 2025 worldwide record. Browse the full monthly archive to compare periods.