Last September, more than 4,000 people died after a massive earthquake triggered a tsunami that swept through the Central Sulawesi capital of Palu and its surrounding areas. Less than a year later, one teenage boy in Palu has been arrested for stealing a tool that could help warn citizens of future earthquakes.
Police in Sigi regency — an area, located immediately south of Palu, that was one of the worst hit by last year’s disaster — say they have arrested one teenager and are in pursuit of his accomplices for stealing a seismometer belonging to the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), which they tried to sell online.
“The culprits used their friend’s phone to post [an ad for the stolen seismometer on Facebook] using an account with the initials AC. They advertised the product on social media. But their friend didn’t know that they had posted a stolen item,” Sigi Police Chief Wawan Sumantri told Liputan 6 today.
Wawan then said that officers set up a sting operation to bust the seismometer thieves. One suspect, a 14-year-old boy identified by his initials AP, was arrested on July 23 followed by the arrest of a fence, a 43-year-old man named Sofian, several days later. Another suspect, a teenager identified by his initial S, is believed to be in the Jakarta satellite city of Bogor.
The police’s ongoing investigation has determined that the boys stole the seismometer, which was planted in a village in Palu in June. The police say the boys already sold a solar component used to power the seismometer for IDR480,000 (US$34), which they then used to buy meth and to pay for access to an internet cafe.
“The total [value of the seismometer and its components] was IDR700 million (US$49,900),” Wawan said.
AP told reporters that he didn’t know that what he had stolen was used to detect earthquakes.
The police say that, if convicted, the suspected seismometer thieves may face a maximum sentence of nine years in prison, though it would likely be reduced according to the country’s juvenile crime laws.
Worryingly, the theft of early disaster warning systems appears to be quite common in Indonesia. Following a tsunami on the Sunda Strait in late December, an Indonesian official said that the country hasn’t had a functional tsunami detection system in place since 2012 because many of the detection buoys had been stolen or vandalized.
