The earthquake in Chile is not unexpected

Although scientists have not been able to predict exactly when earthquakes will occur, they already know the tremors in Chile last weekend.

Chileans comfort each other near a collapsed building during the earthquake on February 27 in the city of Talca.Photo: Reuters.

Time said Chile was located on the Pacific Ring of Fire (also known as the Pacific Seismic Belt) - an area surrounding the Pacific Ocean with a length of 40,000 km. It is an area with the most earthquake and volcanic eruptions on the planet. According to statistics, 90% of earthquakes on earth occur at this belt.

The strong seismic mass at the Pacific rim can create tsunamis - powerful waves moving from the center of the earthquake to the continental shelf. It was a phenomenon that happened on the Indian Ocean in 2004, when an earthquake of 9.3 magnitude struck near Sumatra island of Indonesia. Then about 230,000 people were killed by the tsunami.

People sleep in the streets of Valparaiso, Chile for fear of aftershocks.Photo: Reuters .

The Chile earthquake on February 27 occurred at one of the most dangerous milling lines (fault lines) in the Pacific region. Its cause is the movement of the Nazca tectonic plate beneath the South American tectonic plate. The Nazca tectonic plate is located deep in the Pacific Ocean, while the South American tectonic plate is heading south. The boundary between the two tectonic plates is called the milling line. When the two plates suddenly rubbed against each other, a seismic wave would appear along the milling line of about 640 km in length. With a magnitude of 8.8 on the Richter scale, the Chilean earthquake was nearly 1,000 times stronger than the earthquake in Haiti in January, according to some scientists.

Chile witnessed many earthquakes. In 1960, a seismic of magnitude 9.5 occurred in the city of Valdivia, killing nearly 2,000 people. This is the strongest earthquake that humans can measure with scientific equipment. On February 27, Chileans experienced the strongest earthquake in half a century. Since 1973 Chile has witnessed 13 seismic events with magnitudes of 7 or more. That fact explains why construction regulations in Chile are much stricter than Haiti. It is these strict regulations that help Chile reduce the number of deaths every time an earthquake occurs.