Earthquake in Russia: What is the Pacific Fire belt and why 90% of the earthquakes of the world occur in this area

Illustration of "Fire ring" of the Pacific. It is a region of tectonic plates limits around the Pacific Ocean, where earthquakes and volcanoes are frequent. — Photo foot, The fire belt is a region of tectonic plates limits around the Pacific Ocean, where earthquakes and volcanoes are common.

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The Pacific's belt again shake the earth again.

A powerful earthquake of magnitude 8.8 occurred on Wednesday about 130 km from the east coast of the Russian Peninsula of Kamchatka and unleashed Tsunami alerts in the region.

Evacuation orders for parts of Russia, Japan, USA, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia and Chile were given.

Kamchatka is part of the Pacific Fire belt, also known as Fire Ring.

To the west of this area there are several countries in Latin America: Argentina, Bolivia, Canada, Colombia, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, United States, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua and Panama.

Then it folds at the height of the Aleutian Islands, in the north of the Pacific Ocean, between Alaska and the Kamchatka Peninsula.

And then go down to include the coast and the islands of Russia, Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, East Timor, Brunéi, Singapore, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Samoa, Tuvalu and New Zealand.

It covers, in total, an area of 40,000 kilometers and there are also the largest number of volcanoes around the world.

In it is most of the planet's supervolcanes.

View of the Yasur Volcano Crater in erupting, Tanna Island, Vanuatu, Melanesia, South Pacific. — Photo foot, In the Pacific Fire belt are most of the great volcanoes on our planet.

This Wednesday's tremor generated a tsunami with waves of 3 to 4 meters high on the coast of Kamchatka, according to Sergei Lebedev, Regional Emergency Minister.

There were several injured, according to preliminary information from the Russian state media, although none of gravity.

The waves of the tsunami generated by the earthquake – which occurred at 18km deep – also arrived on the island of Hawaii and the west coast of the United States.

In Crescent City, north of California, waves of 1.09 meters were recorded, according to the National Tsunamis Alert Center.

According to data from the United States Geological Service, this is the sixth most powerful earthquake that is recorded.

Sismologist Lucy Jones points out that the earthquake is not expected to be catastrophic anywhere in the American continent, but it is striking that it happens again in a horseshoe -shaped area with high seismic activity.

90% of the planet's earthquakes

“In the Pacific Fire belt 90% of all the earthquakes and 80% of the largest earthquakes take place,” he explained in a previous interview with BBC Mundo, the executive president of the Geophysical Institute of Peru (IGP), Hernando Taveras.

The Pacific Ocean bed rests on several tectonic plates and “the fact that the seismic activity is intense in the Fire Ring is due to their convergence and its friction, which makes it accumulate tension to release,” Taveras said.

And it is that the activity in the fire belt is the result of the so -called plate tectonic, the movement and collision of the layers of the earth's crust that give rise to the earthquakes.

They can even generate volcanic activity.

Aerial view of the city of Sévero-Kurilsk, which was flooded after the tsunami caused by the earthquake of magnitude 8.8 that hit the Russian Peninsula of Kamchatka. — Photo foot, The city of Severo-Kurilsk, in Russia, was flooded after the tsunami caused by the earthquake of magnitude 8.8 that occurred about 130 km from the east coast of the Russian Peninsula of Kamchatka, in the belt of fire.

As a volcano with “high gas content”

In a previous interview with BBC Mundo, Hugo Delgado, director of the National Disaster Prevention Center of Mexico, explained that an earthquake acts on a volcano such as when a bottle of mineral water is stirred.

“A mechanical movement can cause gas to accumulate on the surface of the bottle. This increases the pressure and causes water to go to jets. Something similar occurs in the volcano, which has a high gas content,” he says.

According to the specialist, only powerful earthquakes, superior to a magnitude 9, could have an impact of great relevance on nearby volcanoes.

An earthquake of this type, says, can even cause the reactivation of sleeping volcanoes for centuries, that those who are active intensify or that even suddenly decrease their activity.

“The impact of the seismic waves of these great magnitude earthquakes is so strong that they can not only cause an eruption, but they can make the volcano lose their activity.”