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🇮🇩 Indonesia /Disasters & Emergencies

Mysterious booms leave Bandung residents wondering if a thief is on the roof

From CNN Indonesia · () Indonesian

Translated from Indonesian and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Named sources Ongoing story
  • Residents across Bandung reported repeated booming sounds from midnight into the early hours of Saturday and offered various explanations, including a possible thief, loud music or military training.
  • Indonesia’s BMKG said its monitoring found no earthquake activity in Bandung during the period and recorded only low-intensity lightning.

For hours, residents across Bandung and nearby areas heard a repeated booming sound and struggled to work out where it was coming from. The noise began on Friday night and continued into the early hours of Saturday.

From midnight until 2 a.m., it was quite intense. The sound lasted a while, then disappeared and returned.

· Riva DessthaniaA Bandung resident described when and how often she heard the mysterious booms.

Riva Dessthania, 32, a resident of East Bandung’s Arcamanik area, initially thought the sound came from someone walking across her roof. She said she feared for her safety, then turned to social media after the noise kept returning and discovered that many other Bandung residents had heard it too.

“From midnight until 2 a.m., it was quite intense. The sound lasted a while, then disappeared and returned,” Riva told CNNIndonesia.com on Saturday. She said it sounded like the faint thud of someone walking on a roof or in the garden beside her bedroom window, which initially made her think a burglar might be nearby.

I personally felt the sound was like the faint thud of someone walking on the roof, and the garden beside my bedroom window initially made me afraid there might be a burglar. When I checked social media, I saw that many Bandung residents had felt the same thing.

· Riva DessthaniaRiva explained why she initially feared a break-in and how she learned others had heard the noise.

Other residents described similar experiences. One social media user in East Bandung said the sound woke them at about 1 a.m. and even made the bathroom glass vibrate. Another said they went outside at around 2 a.m., thinking a neighbor was holding a late-night party. A different user suggested the noise could have come from military training.

We are still investigating. The reported booming sounds showed no indication of an earthquake. Based on BMKG monitoring and checks of seismic data, there was no earthquake activity in Bandung and surrounding areas during that period.

· WijayantoThe BMKG director described the agency’s findings on the possible seismic cause.

BMKG Director of Earthquake and Tsunami Wijayanto said the agency was still investigating. He said its earthquake monitoring and data checks showed no seismic activity in Bandung and surrounding areas during the reported period. BMKG did record lightning overnight, but said its lightning detector showed low intensity and no significant activity matching the repeated booms reported by residents.

BMKG’s Lightning Detector monitoring data recorded lightning activity, but its intensity was low and did not show significant activity like that reported by residents.

· WijayantoWijayanto addressed lightning as another possible explanation for the sounds.
About this summary

Originally published by CNN Indonesia in Indonesian. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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