Qualla: The Night Bali Broke https://qualla.com/1815-bali-earthquake en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:27 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/q/w/9/f/1815-bali-earthquake-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: The Night Bali Broke https://qualla.com/1815-bali-earthquake The Night Bali Broke: Introduction https://qualla.com/1815-bali-earthquake/ Photo credit Mikenorton, CC BY-SA 3.0. The people of Buleleng had been asleep for barely an hour when the ground began to move. It was sometime between ten and eleven on the night of November 22, 1815, and the shaking was violent enough to crack the earth itself. Within minutes, the mountainsides above Singaraja, already saturated by heavy rains, gave way. What the survivors described as a massive explosion was in fact the sound of an entire coastal range collapsing. The debris roared down the Banyumala River valley, gathering volume and speed, and buried seventeen villages before reaching the sea. The flows that entered the ocean generated a tsunami that swept the northern Balinese coast. By morning, 11,453 people were dead, making this the deadliest natural disaster in Balinese history.

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Image: Mikenorton | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/q/w/9/f/1815-bali-earthquake-wp/qw9f-the-night-bali-broke-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full The Night Bali Broke: A Fault Hiding in Plain Sight https://qualla.com/1815-bali-earthquake/ Photo credit Mikenorton, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Flores back-arc thrust fault runs just off Bali's northern coast, stretching east through the Banda Sea from Bali to the island of Wetar. It formed from the slow collision between the Sunda and Australian tectonic plates, which converge northward in a grinding process that ha...

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Image: Mikenorton | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/q/w/9/f/1815-bali-earthquake-wp/qw9f-the-night-bali-broke-a-fault-hiding-in-plain-sight.mp3 0:06 2 full The Night Bali Broke: Mountains That Became Rivers https://qualla.com/1815-bali-earthquake/ Photo credit Mikenorton, CC BY-SA 3.0. Heavy rainfall in the days before the earthquake had destabilized the steep slopes above Singaraja. When the shaking began, the saturated mountainsides collapsed in what must have sounded, in the darkness, like artillery fire. The landslide carried boulders and debris down the Ba...

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Image: Mikenorton | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/q/w/9/f/1815-bali-earthquake-wp/qw9f-the-night-bali-broke-mountains-that-became-rivers.mp3 0:06 3 full The Night Bali Broke: A Tsunami Born from Mud https://qualla.com/1815-bali-earthquake/ Photo credit Mikenorton, CC BY-SA 3.0. The landslide debris did not stop at the shoreline. Massive flows of rock and sediment poured into the sea along Bali's northern coast, displacing enough water to generate a destructive tsunami. The wave killed an additional 1,200 people and swept away the coastal buildings of Bu...

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Image: Mikenorton | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/q/w/9/f/1815-bali-earthquake-wp/qw9f-the-night-bali-broke-a-tsunami-born-from-mud.mp3 0:06 4 full The Night Bali Broke: Darkness Over Buleleng https://qualla.com/1815-bali-earthquake/ Photo credit Mikenorton, CC BY-SA 3.0. Singaraja, the seat of power in northern Bali, was devastated. The earthquake struck at the worst possible hour. Families were indoors, asleep, in structures that offered no protection against both violent shaking and the wall of debris that followed. Aftershocks continued for at...

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Image: Mikenorton | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/q/w/9/f/1815-bali-earthquake-wp/qw9f-the-night-bali-broke-darkness-over-buleleng.mp3 0:06 5 full The Night Bali Broke: The Fault That Keeps Returning https://qualla.com/1815-bali-earthquake/ Photo credit Mikenorton, CC BY-SA 3.0. Modern seismologists have modeled what a magnitude 7.3 earthquake on the Flores back-arc thrust would produce today, and the results are sobering. The models predict shaking intensities of VIII to IX across northern and eastern Bali, the same levels that destroyed Buleleng in 181...

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Image: Mikenorton | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/q/w/9/f/1815-bali-earthquake-wp/qw9f-the-night-bali-broke-the-fault-that-keeps-returning.mp3 0:06 6 full