The earth turns on the ring of fire

Jiasian town, southern Taiwan (China) on 4 March morning fell into a panic when the 6.7-magnitude strong earthquake with many aftershocks shook large buildings, causing hundreds of people rushed to the street.

At least 12 people were injured, dozens of houses collapsed, fire ablaze many places, subway services, North-South railway lines were suspended for hours.

The director of the seismic center of the Taiwan Meteorological Bureau, Kuo Kai-wen, said that although geography may have nothing to do with the seismic disaster in Chile, this earthquake has the strongest intensity at southern Taiwan for over a century. This is very unusual and unexpected.

On the same day, two strong medium-sized earthquakes of 5.3 and 5.2 magnitude also occurred in the West Java region with the epicenter 30 km deep and North Sulawesi (Indonesia) with the epicenter 12km deep, but did not cause casualties or significant damage.

Earthquake in the city of Kaohsiung.Photo: Reuters

Earlier, on March 2, a 6.1-magnitude earthquake in the city of Tuguegarao, Luzon (Phillippine), interrupted TT Gloria Arroyo's speech. While many geologists claim that the seismic events have nothing to do with the Chile earthquake, some others are concerned that continuous earthquakes on the Pacific ring of fire are a warning sign. before the new terrible seismic episodes.

Across the Pacific coast, three strong 6-magnitude aftershocks on 3.3 continued to shake Chile, causing panic for thousands of people. Chilean authorities issued a tsunami warning shortly afterwards, but the alarm command was lifted a few hours later.

Scientists warn that the risk of earthquakes in southern Chile remains huge when the earthquake on February 27 formed many new faults with gaps between the geological layers here.