12-Aug-2009:
Geologist Narrows Down Location of Southeast Asia's Next Big Earthquake

Prof. Kerry Sieh, who spoke at the 6th Annual Meeting of the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society, said that the 400km section of the Sunda Megathrust will rupture in the next 30 years. This will have the potential to cause a magnitude 8.8 earthquake.

Prof. Sieh and his team use corals to learn about earthquakes that had occured in the past. Corals record sea-level changes in their growth patterns over hundreds of years and provide useful data that can be used to predict future earthquakes by observing patterns in the tectonic behaviour of the fault.

It has been observed that a pattern of large earthquakes occur every 200 years on the section of the West Sumatra coast. The magnitude 8.4 quake in 2007 relieved some of the tectonic tension, but that was only the first in a predicted series of earthquakes in that area.

Singapore will not be affected by the series of earthquakes because the city is built on either solid bedrock or thin soils that are unlikely to shake much. However, the earthquakes that occur along the 2000km stretch to the west of Sumatra could set off a tsunami that would threaten the lives of more than a million people living along Sumatra's coast.

Straits Times Article, 12 Aug 2009, Page A6

TODAY Article, 12 Aug 2009, Page 19