Other adverse impact of El Nino and its drought to the Indonesian Archipelago is forest fire. Million of hectares of tropical rain forests have been damaged by the fire in Kalimantan and Sumatra during the El Nino of 1982-83. With it probably a lot of species of flora and fauna as yet never been examined and known to science, may have been burnt.
Tsunami
Tsunamis in the archipelago mostly are locally generated and of local scale. They can be generated by great volcano eruption such as the eruption of the Krakatau in 1883. But the major part of tsunamis in Indonesia are caused by the tectonic earthquakes occurring near or at the sea. The earthquakes can be due to the plate motion against each other along their faults, collision and subduction zones. Those of small scale earthquakes are due to landslides. Example of the latter are the tsunami that occurred at the coast of Lomblem, Flores Island, in July 1979, killing 540 people.
Since the tsunami of Krakatau, more than 30 of them have been recorded for the archipelago. The most recent of them were the tsunami of the Banggai Fault, Sulawesi Island in January of these year. Tabel 1 indicates the available record of the tsunamis that have occurred in the Indonesian archipelago.
Table 1. Recorded tsunami in Indonesia
