Singapore:
A powerful earthquake of Magnitude 7.7 centered in the Sagaing region near the Myanmar -Stad Mandalay caused great damage in that country and also shook the neighboring Thailand on Friday.
How vulnerable is Myanmar for earthquakes?
Myanmar is on the border between two tectonic plates and is one of the world's most seismic active countries, although large and destructive earthquakes are relatively rare in the Sagaing region.
“The plate boundary between the India Plate and Eurasia plate runs approximately North-South, cuts through the center of the country,” said Joanna Faure Walker, professor and earthquake expert at the University College London.
She said the plates go horizontally past each other with different speeds. Although this causes the “strike slip” inventions that are normally less powerful than those in “subduction zones” such as Sumatra, where one plate slides under the other, they can still reach the Magnitudes from 7 to 8.
Why was Friday's earthquake so harmful?
Sagaing has been struck in recent years by various earthquakes, with a 6.8 -magnitude event that caused at least 26 deaths and dozens of injuries at the end of 2012.
But Friday's event was “probably the biggest” to touch the mainland of Myanmar in three -quarters of a century, said Bill McGuire, another earthquake expert at UCL.
Roger Musson, honorary researcher at the British Geological Survey, said Reuters that the shallow depth of the earthquake meant that the damage would be more serious. According to the United States Geological Survey, the epicenter of the earthquake was only 10 km (6.2 miles).
“This is very harmful because it has occurred at a shallow depth, so the shock waves have not disappeared when they go from the focus of the earthquake to the surface. The buildings received the full power of shaking.”
“It is important not to be aimed at epicentres because the seismic waves do not radiate from the epicenter – they radiate from the whole line of fault,” he added.
How was Myanmar prepared?
The USGS Earthquake Hazards Program said on Friday that fatal victims can be between 10,000 and 100,000 people, and the economic impact can be as high as 70% of Myanmar GDP.
Musson said that such predictions are based on data from earlier earthquakes and on Myanmar's size, location and overall weight of earth.
The relative rarity of great seismic events in the Sagaing region – that is close to heavily populated Mandalay – means that infrastructure was not built to resist them. That means that the damage can get much worse.
Musson said that the last major earthquake to hit the region was in 1956, and it is unlikely that houses were built to resist seismic forces that are as powerful as they struck on Friday.
“Most seismicity in Myanmar is further west, while this runs through the center of the country,” he said.
(Except for the headline, this story was not edited by NDTV staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.)
