People should be prepared for further damage caused by aftershocks following a magnitude 6.8 earthquake at 2:44pm yesterday, although its aftershocks are expected to be of smaller magnitude and occur less frequently than yesterday’s quakes, the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) said yesterday.
Bureau data showed that the quake’s epicenter was 42.7km north of Taitung County Hall at a depth of 7km, which is within Taitung’s Chihshang Township (池上).
The magnitude 6.8 quake, the strongest recorded this year, occurred as the nation was recovering from damage caused by a magnitude 6.4 temblor on Saturday night, with its epicenter in Guanshan Township (關山).
Photo provided by the Executive Yuan
That quake was one of the 73 foreshocks of yesterday’s earthquake, CWB Seismological Center Director Chen Kuo-chang (陳國昌) told reporters.
Yesterday’s quake is also the eighth with a magnitude exceeding 6 this year, Chen said, adding that it could be ranked the sixth or seventh-largest earthquake in Taiwan’s seismic history, following the 921 Earthquake in 1999 and the large aftershocks that followed.
Although few earthquakes have occurred in the past 50 years near the epicenters of this weekend’s quakes, they originated from the inner part of where the Philippine Sea Plate and the Eurasian Plate touch, Chen said.
Compared with the outer side, which is off the coast of Taitung’s Chenggong Township (成功), the inner side has a more rigid rock formation, where earthquakes happen less frequently, he said.
The seismic energy that has accumulated on the inner side of the plates’ meeting point over the past five decades was first released through the magnitude 6.4 earthquake on Saturday, which has likely been balanced by the main earthquake yesterday.
“We cannot predict the occurrences of earthquakes. Theoretically, however, the aftershocks should be of smaller magnitude compared to that of the main earthquake. I estimate that aftershocks are not likely to occur as frequently as the foreshocks. The number of aftershocks exceeding magnitude 5 will also be fewer than the foreshocks,” Chen said.
An aftershock of magnitude 5.4 occurred shortly after yesterday’s earthquake, he added.
A similar situation occurred in 2018, when a magnitude 6.32 earthquake on the Milun Fault triggered an aftershock of magnitude 5.92, he said.
“The Milun Fault is a geologically fragmented zone, and the seismic activities on the zone generated activities in other geological zones from the north to south, as well as from land to sea. The aftershocks lasted about a month, with the number reaching 30 per hour, or three to four per day,” he said, adding that the frequency of aftershocks from this weekend’s quake would not reach that number.
The public warning system for natural disasters functioned normally yesterday, with residents in eight cities and counties south of Chiayi County receiving warnings 10 seconds before the main earthquake, Chen said.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) urged people to be vigilant for further aftershocks in the coming hours.
“Water and electricity supplies in some areas have also been affected by the earthquake,” she wrote on Facebook. “The related disaster relief work is in full swing.”
Additional reporting by AFP
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
RSS