Although the frequency of aftershocks following Sunday's earthquake has fallen dramatically, residents should remain alert for more mini-temblors over the next month, seismologists from the Central Weather Bureau said yesterday
More than 300 aftershocks had been registered by yesterday evening. The strongest, registering 4.9 on the Richter scale, occurred at 4:02pm on Sunday afternoon.
The next-strongest registered 4.8 on the Richter scale, occurring at 1:09am yesterday in Ilan. The epicenter was 10.7km southeast of the bureau's Nanau seismic monitoring station in Ilan County.
Although the number of aftershocks had fallen from 40 in the first hour after the quake to five or six per hour yesterday morning, officials said, strong temblors were still possible over the next few weeks.
"Sometimes aftershocks of a strong earthquake continue to occur in the following two weeks, or even up to one month," Kuo Kai-wen (
Seismologists yesterday stressed again that Sunday's earthquake was a normal release of accumulated energy inside the planet and that strong quakes measuring above 6 on the Richter scale happen every few years.
The bureau also said its system to disseminate emergency earthquake information worked well, with the first crucial information compiled within a minute.
The system, composed of 62 monitoring stations around the island, was launched in December 1994.
Within three minutes of Sunday's quake, details had been sent to fire departments, state-run transportation and power systems, government agencies and the media.
The bureau also sent information via the Internet and the country's pager system.
But officials warned that, while issuing alarms to the public could reduce the impact, there was still no reliable way of predicting future earthquakes.
Officials say they are working on improving the system to reduce the period of time to notify cities 100km away from the epicenter to 30 seconds by the end of 2009.
If they succeed, urban centers could be warned of an earthquake before the seismic waves arrive.
Sunday's earthquake, which occurred off the coast of Hualien, caused a lot of damage in Taipei, roughly 100km from the epicenter.
According to the bureau, it takes 30 seconds for seismic waves to travel from Hualien to Taipei.
Had the real-time monitoring system been in operation, they said, it could have notified Taipei within 20 seconds of detecting the quake. The 10-second warning would be enough to cut the power supply to some areas, thereby reducing the risk of fire, it said.
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