Cheritera Hikayati

Malaysia may not be as immune to earthquakes as is commonly believed. Earthquakes in neighbouring countries may trigger the inactive fault lines running in peninsular Malaysia, say experts.

MALAYSIANS think earthquakes will never occur in the country. But in reality, they do, with the most recent one with its epicentre in Manjung, Perak, occurring on April 29 this year.

In fact, Malaysia has a small history of earthquakes. The region around Sabah, especially around Ranau, Kudat and Lahad Datu, is no stranger to earthquakes, and according to a seismological expert, it is not uncommon for two or three to strike the area yearly.

According to the Engineering Seismo logy and Engineering Earthquake Research Group (E-Seer) of the faculty of civil engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, there is a possibility of a much larger earthquake occurring in Malaysia, especially if the earthquakes in Indonesia trigger the inactive fault lines running in peninsular Malaysia.

Mohd Zamri Ramli, a researcher from E-Seer, shares that an earthquake in the Indonesian region could trigger and re-activate the fault lines in the peninsula. And even if a major earthquake does not happen in Malaysia, the effects of an earthquake in Indonesia could still have dire consequences for us. He points out the 1985 earthquake that devastated Mexico City which had its epicentre more than 350km away.

There have been two more isolated earthquakes since, the one in Manjung, and another in Jerantut, Pahang, on March 27 this year, measuring 3.2 and 2.6 respectively. It should be noted that the Kenyir earthquakes were reservoir-induced seismicity (RIS), possibly caused by the weight of the water destabilising the region, or water seepage through cracks, which reactivated existing dormant fault lines.

The other three locations on the peninsula are the only instances of naturally-occurring earthquakes in modern recorded history. While earthquakes do happen, it is not in a large and destructive scale as witnessed in neighbouring Indonesia, therefore the assumption that we are relatively safe is not far off the mark.

Noorliza explains that earthquakes happen because the earth’s crust is moving all the time.

“It is very dynamic. The earth is never settled and is always moving, constantly creating and destroying land.”

She says that the earth is covered with tectonic plates, which can be likened to ice sheets over a pool of water, and a fault line is where two or more plates meet.

“Tectonic plates are literally plates of rock which are moving. These plates move relative to one another, and sometimes they get lodged or stuck. They still exert force on each other, but do not move.

“Sometimes, the accumulated energy overcomes the friction and it breaks, and then we have an earthquake.

“In Malaysia, we do not get major earthquakes because we are not on the edge of a tectonic plate. We are on the Sunda Shelf, which is an extension of the Eurasia plate, so we should be pretty stable,” she says, but adds that nobody knows that for sure.

These plates have cracks on its surface, and these form minor fault lines and fractures.

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