Ring of Fire (no , not Johnny Cash’s)

Love is a burnin’ thing
And it makes a fiery ring
Bound by wild desire
I fell into a ring of fire

Speaking about Ring of Fire. The Pacific Ring of Fire is a large geologically active zone where lots and lots of Earthquakes are recorded every year. New Zealand is actually right on top of that and in between / on the Australian and Pacific Plate. Therefore around 20.000 earthquakes are caused on average per year of which the New Zealanders can feel about 200. If you want to get an idea of how many there are per day, which regions could feel it and what its magnitude was, head over to https://www.geonet.org.nz/quakes/felt

If you sort them by category and check for strong earthquakes there is about 1 of those every 1 to 2 months. Now since I myself haven’t ever felt an earthquake I don’t know how dangerous this is for the people living in New Zealand however it sure is scary to know that you’ll be affected by strong or severe earthquakes every month or every other month. I don’t know how well I could sleep knowing that.

Another shocking thing to note is that the frequency of severe earthquakes seems to increase. Since the big earthquake in Christchurch about which we talked earlier in our course there have been 4–5 other big earthquakes. By big I mean earthquakes that hit at least 6 on the Richter scale.

If the records (which go back as far as the 1840s) can be trusted, up until the 2000s these earthquakes happened about once every 10–15 years. In recent times it’s much closer to one per year. We (or rather the New Zealanders) are experiencing earthquakes with a certain impact (no pun intended) at a much higher rate than ever before. Recently several studies and books that were published indicate that climate change is a part of the reason for the higher frequency of earthquakes. It sure isn’t responsible for an increase of 15 times as many earthquakes but definitely plays a part in this.

New Zealanders have had to live with earthquakes for quite some time. Therefore the New Zealand Earthquake Commission (EQC) has been and will be providing public education to the people. This is obviously very much needed. I am interested to see how the EQC is going to face the challenge of not only educating people about earthquakes but also doing advocacy work to inspire change in the country.