Late Tuesday night a massive 8.2 earthquake shook the northern coast of Chile and surrounding areas which follows a magnitude 5.1 quake that rattled Los Angeles last week.
Often times earthquakes of this magnitude can trigger a lingering ripple of aftershocks and additional earthquakes throughout the following weeks which are often felt in the “Ring of Fire” including the coast of California, Alaska, Japan, the Philippines, Chile and most any coastal area in the Pacific Rim.
We spoke to Seismologist Jim Dixon with the Alaska Volcano Observatory who said its always a possibility for a large earthquake to trigger another one.
Dixon: “Anytime that there’s a large earthquake its not uncommon to sit there and see small responses to it. What you’re really getting is a large seismic wave, for an example maybe its sort of squeezing the volcanic chamber and you’re getting smaller little earthquakes but all the effects are going to be very minor and the only people that are going to notice them are seismologists.”
We asked Dixon if an earthquake occurring as far away as South America could trigger smaller quakes near Alaska.
Dixon: “It certainly can. We saw effects from the Sumatra earthquake here in Alaska and the best case was in Wrangle, Mt. Wrangle where they had small little earthquakes that were associated from the seismic wave when it came passing through.”
Scientists still have no way of accurately predicting when or where an earthquake will strike making it very difficult to say how much of an impact an earthquake of this magnitude could have.