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Sumatra a quake, tsunami risk
09/12/2005 09:51 - (SA)
San Francisco - The Indonesian region could face more big earthquakes and tsunamis in the future because a length of the fault that caused the disaster last year is building up strain and could buckle in the coming decades, a scientist said.
Last December, a magnitude-9.0 temblor centred near the Indonesian island of Sumatra triggered a giant tsunami, killing more than 1767nbsp;000 people in 11 countries. Three months later, a magnitude-8.7 quake struck in the same region, killing 1 000 people.
Kerry Sieh, a seismologist at the California Institute of Technology, has been studying earthquakes in Indonesia for years. He said a southern section of the fault that did not rupture is slowly building up stress and could snap in the future.
Sieh, who discussed his research at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco this week, did not forecast how soon that might happen.
Scientists are turning their focus on the section of the fault near the Mentawai islands, which has seen big earthquakes about every 200 years. The last time the area felt shaking was a pair of earthquakes in the early 19th century.
- AP
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