Earthquakes don’t rock and roll in a series – Phivolcs

MANILA, Philippines – Contrary to viral news, the moon didn’t turn green.

And the planets were not aligned, the reason for the April 20 “greening” of the moon, a viral hoax that prompted the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration or NASA to shoot it down.

Here in the Philippines, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) calmed public fears of a string of earthquakes around the Pacific Ring of Fire, the string of volcanoes around the Pacific where seismic faults and moving trenches shake and rattle once in a while.

Not to worry, but then again, always be prepared for the Big One, the country’s top earthquake scientist said. The Philippines is not linked to the series of Earth-shattering events, said Renato Solidum, Phivolcs director.

Not after four temblors struck three countries within days of each other, nearly on the eve of the April 18 earthquake that shook San Francisco 110 years ago and killed over 3,000 people in 1906. This time, killer earthquakes hit Japan and Ecuador.

There is no connection between the latest deadly temblors in Japan and Ecuador and, in between the one that shook Tonga in a remote corner of the Pacific.

“An earthquake can’t be predicted, when prediction is essentially knowing the precise time and location,” said Solidum, a trained geologist. “No one has done that, it hasn’t been done yet.”

“Japan and Ecuador are too far apart, 15,445 kilometers apart,” he explained. “You cannot relate the two events because the trenches that generated the earthquakes are not even connected. One cannot have caused the other. ”

Like the tiles that start the domino effect, they must be near enough to each other. A fault can only trigger an earth movement within the same region. Since Japan and Ecuador are distant, “there’s no pattern, there’s no scientific basis to say the two earthquakes were related,” Solidum said.

“And you cannot say the Philippines will be next, there’s no basis for that, the faults and trenches in Japan and Ecuador are not connected to ours,” said Solidum, who studied Earth Science for his doctorate at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography.

Earthquakes do happen, he said: “small events happen every day.” The 20 or so earthquakes that  are recorded by Phivolcs each day are big enough to be pinpointed, but there are many other small ones that are detected with no precise locations, he said. “It’s also possible that a large earthquake would come along.”

On April 24, Phivolcs recorded a 3.4-magnitude quake 13 kilometers north of Masbate; a 2.5-magnitude temblor 38 km south of Candon City in Ilocos Sur; a 3.3-magnitude shaker 22 km south of Sinait also in Ilocos Sur; and a 2.9-magnitude earthquake 69 km south of Sabtang in Batanes.

A magnitude measures the energy released at the source of the earthquake based on seismograph records.

The killer 7.8-magnitude earthquake that hit Ecuador collapsed buildings and bridges, warped roads and brought down power and phonelines. It was the country’s worsen since 1979 when 600 people were killed and 20,000 injured, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

Shortly before that last April 14, a quake shook Kumamoto province on the Japanese island of Kyushu (population 13 million) and killed nine people. Barely a day later, a 7.3-magnitude temblor hit again, killing more than 40 people, injuring about a thousand and causing widespread damage.

It was the strongest to strike Japan since a magnitude 9 offshore earthquake in 2011 that caused a deadly tsunami which claimed 18,000 lives and set off a nuclear plant meltdown in Fukushima.

On April 17, a magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck southeast of the Pacific island nation of Tonga, 277 kilometers south-southeast of the capital Nuku’alofa, the USGS said. It noted that the South Pacific Ocean around Tonga is one of the most seismically active areas due to the convergence of the Australia and Pacific tectonic plates.

Last March, a magnitude 6 quake struck the ocean floor between Tonga and Fiji. – SciencePhilippines