It’s Ecuador’s Turn
The BBC reports that “At least 235 people have been confirmed dead and more than 1,500 people injured after Ecuador was hit by its most powerful earthquake in decades.” The US Geological Survey has the technical details of the magnitude 7.8 quake in the ocean trench near Muisne, Ecuador. The quakes in the trench are the result of the subduction of the Nazca Plate beneath the South American Plate. The process created the Andes Mountains and is making them higher.
While I have always believed that a major tremor on one side of the “Circle of Fire” in the Pacific will result in a major tremor on the opposite side, I can’t prove it.
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A 7.8 is far milder than you’d expect if the Pacific plate decided to burrow deeper under the South American plate. It’s this burrowing that drove up the Andes and the coastal mountains here on the US west coast, and if that takes another step and burrows deeper again, they’re expecting it to be a magnitude 9.0 earthquake similar to what hit Japan a couple of years ago. The Pacific Northwest is going to be a desolate wasteland after that, because unlike Japan they didn’t even know they could be hit by earthquakes until the 1980’s and thus only the most recent construction is built to take it…
Further south in the trench off southern Chile was a 9.5 quake, the largest on record. Witnesses in Quito reported that it was a ‘roller’ – it lasted a long time and was accompanied by a lot of motion. They always seem worse that the quick, sharp quakes because you have time to register what is happening.
It has been a while since there has been a quake in that area, so it isn’t a surprise to anyone.
The ‘sharp’ quakes in trenches tend to cause tsunamis as the ocean floor drops.