Nine people died and more than 1000 were injured in Taiwan after the island was hit by its biggest earthquake in at least 25 years on the morning of April 3, 2024. While the Taiwan earthquake monitoring agency was 7.2 magnitude, the US Geological Survey put it at 7.4
The epicentre of the quake was located just 18 km south-southwest of the Hualien County which is situated in eastern Taiwan. Multiple aftershocks were experienced and one of them was 6.5 magnitude, according to USGS.
Notably, Taiwan is prone to earthquakes as it lies along the Pacific Ring of Fire, where 90 percent of the world’s earthquakes takes place. The island and its surrounding waters have registered about 2,000 earthquakes with a magnitude of 4.0 or greater since 1980 and more than 100 earthquakes with a magnitude above 5.5 according to the USGS, a report by an international media agency.
The Ring of Fire is essentially a string of hundreds of volcanoes and earthquakes which runs along the Pacific Ocean. It is a semicircle or horseshoe in shape and stretches nearly 40,250 km.
The Ring of Fire traces the meeting points of numerous tectonic plates including Eurasian, North American Juan de Fuca, Cocos, Caribbean Nazca, Antarctic, Indian, Australian, Philippines and other smaller plates which all encircle the large Pacific Plate according to a report by an international media agency. It runs through 15 more countries including the US, Indonesia, Mexico, Japan, Canada, Guatemala, Russia, Peru and Philippines.
The Ring of Fire witnesses so many earthquakes due to constant sliding past, colliding into, moving above or below each other of the tectonic plates. An earthquake occurs when a plate has moved far enough and the edges unstick on one of the faults. Taiwan experiences earthquakes due to interaction on the Philippine Sea Plate and the Eurasian Plate.
The existence of volcanoes in the Ring of Fire is also due to the movement of the tectonic plates Many of the volcanoes have been formed through a process known as subduction. It takes place when two plates collide with each other and the heavier plate is shoved under another creating a deep trench.
Basically, when a downgoing oceanic plate like the Pacific Plate is shoved into hotter mantle plate, it heats up, volatile elements mix and this produces the magma. The magma then rises up and through the overlying plate and spurts out at the surface which leads the formation of volcanoes, according to a report by an international media agency. Most of the subduction zones in the planet are located in the Ring of Fire and that’s why it hosts a large number of volcanoes.
