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The wrath of the Ring of Fire
The wrath of the Ring of Fire
It's been a horrible week for the people of the Samoan islands and the coastal towns and cities of Sumatra, all of whom have again been reminded of the constant danger their geography puts them in - 80% of the world's largest earthquakes occur along the Pacific Ring of Fire.
New Zealand too sits on that volatile seismic belt, and this week's events have raised questions about how well-prepared we are for a high-magnitude earthquake or the tsunamis often created by earthquakes in the Pacific.
Science - in the form of the sensors and equipment that make up the tsunami gauge network - is playing a part in alerting us to the threat of this type of potential disaster. But planning for natural hazards, as New Zealand discovered this week, is as much about the logistics of getting the word out as it is about getting accurate, real-time data from the sensors.
Will we ever get to the stage where we can predict when the quakes that cause such destruction are coming? Maybe not, but research appearing in Nature this week suggests the massive Boxing Day quake of 2004 near Indonesia may have weakened the San Andreas fault line 8000km away. If scientists can more accurately measure the effects of an earthquake on other parts of a fault line, it may be easier to estimate when a fault is likely to fail. This is an area of research, as Ring of Fire dwellers, that should be dear to our hearts.
ENDS
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