Monday, 12 October 2009
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Asia Pacific Earthquake Tsunami Linked
Links between earthquakes which have struck Samoa, Indonesia and now Vanuatu cannot be ruled out, an international expert said.
New Zealand could not afford to relax its guard against earthquakes and tsunami, the director of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii, Charles McCreery, said, The Dominion Post reported on Friday.
A tsunami alert went out on Thursday, after a series of nine earthquakes near Vanuatu, with the largest of magnitude 7.8. It followed a magnitude 8.3 earthquake and a tsunami which devastated Samoa last Wednesday. A quake killed more than 700 people in Indonesia hours later.
A study made public this week found earthquake vibrations may affect faults at great distances. It found vibrations from the 2004 Indonesian earthquake may have increased the frequency of small quakes in California's San Andreas Fault by causing fluids to move into the fault lines.
Links between the Pacific quakes could not be ruled out, Mr. McCreery said.
Tuesday's Vanuatu quakes generated a tsunami just 4 cm high. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center canceled warnings after 1 pm, but authorities in New Zealand stayed on alert until 4:30 pm.
New Zealand, which sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, remained at risk, McCreery said.
"You have a lot of earthquakes, you're right on the border between the Australian and Pacific tectonic plates, so you have a big seismic risk, and you have some history of tsunami. If a really big earthquake rips, it will send waves to New Zealand," the Dominion Post quoted him as saying.
GNS Science seismologist Warwick Smith said links between earthquakes at great distances apart were poorly understood. "We don't know if this has advanced or set back the clock."
Niwa principal scientist Rob Bell said when a tsunami hit New Zealand after coming thousands of kilometers, the biggest waves could arrive hours after the first ones.
"What happens is they reflect and bounce off undersea shelf systems. It's like creating a disturbance in a pond, the waves will hit other waves. It gets pretty chaotic," Bell was quoted as saying.
The question is whether these were natural disasters or man made? Click to find out here.
UzReport.com 10-09-09
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