A powerful earthquake of magnitude 7.7 centered in the teak area near Myanmar city Mandalay caused widespread damage in that country and also shook neighboring Thailand on Friday.
How weak is Myanmar for earthquake?
Myanmar is located on the border between the two tectonic plates and is one of the most seismically active countries in the world, although large and disastrous earthquakes have made relatively rare in the saga region.
Joanna Fore Walker, a professor and earthquake expert at University College London, said, “The boundary of the plate between India’s plate and the Eurasia plate runs almost in the north-south, which passes through the country.”
She said that the plates move forward horizontally at different speeds. While it causes “strike slip”, which are commonly less powerful than those seen in the “subduction zone” like Sumatra, where one plate slides under the other, they can still reach the magnitude of 7 to 8.
Why was Friday earthquake so harmful?
In recent years, teak has been hit by several quakes, with at least 26 deaths and dozens of injuries in late 2012 with a 6.8 magnitude.
But Friday’s incident was “probably the largest” to hit the mainland of Myanmar among the three quarters of a century, said another earthquake expert at UCL Bill McGuer.
In the British Geological Survey, Honorary Research Fellow Roger Musason told Reuters that the shallow depth of the earthquake meant that the damage would be more serious. According to the United States Geological Survey, the earthquake sub -center was at a depth of just 10 km (6.2 mi).
“It is very harmful because it is at shallow depth, so shockwaves are not dissolved because they go to the surface from the earthquake to the surface. The buildings gained full strength of shocks.”
He said, “It is important not to focus on the epicenter as seismic waves do not exit the sub -center – they exit the entire line of mistake,” he said.
How ready Myanmar was?
The USGS earthquake dangers program said on Friday that the deadly can be between 10,000 and 100,000 people, and economic impact may exceed 70% of Myanmar’s GDP.
Musus said that such forecasts are based on data, location and readiness of the previous earthquake and the readiness of the overall earthquake.
Relative rarity of large seismic events in the teak region – which is close to a heavy population mandal – means that the infrastructure was not created to face infrastructure. This means that the loss can be very bad.
Mouson said the last major earthquake to hit the region was in 1956, and the houses were not created to face earthquake forces on Friday as people hitting.
“Most of the earthquake in Myanmar is ahead in the west, while it is running below the center of the country,” he said.
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