Okhotsk Sea Earthquake: Russia's Seismic Activity

The Okhotsk Sea Earthquake, an Earthquake with a release of a massive amount of energy at a massive depth. This phenomenon happened in Russia in May 24th, 2013 and in this report, you will learn about this earthquake, how it happened, the aftershock, and about how Russia thinks they should deal with this issue, and what I think should do differently in the future. Why did it happen?

According to the data from GS RAS and NEIC USGS, the earthquake happened with the circumstances of “dominating compressions stresses”. The earthquake had a massive depth, which is the reason no tsunamis occurred because the earthquake was very deep down. The subduction zones sink down in the earth so space in between the subducting and overriding plates and the depth of the earthquake all increase. The Friday M8,3 earthquake happened because of a faulting but information from the USGS states that it did not, in fact, occurs at the interface between two plates but was deep in within the Pacific plate. No other terms influenced the earthquake or caused it to happen. It was a natural fault abnormally deep in the surface of the earth. How did the natural disaster impact the area: well, there were some nasty aftershocks one which happened 9 hours after the original 8.3 earthquakes. This aftershock has a rating of 6,8 that happened at a depth of 642 km and at a distance of 320 km southwest of its epicenter.

There was a tsunami warning but again nothing happened because the depth of the earthquake was too far down to cause a tsunami. No casualties or substantial damage is what the Russian emergency authorities said. The Okhotsk earthquake caused impacts with MSK-64 scale intensity up to 2 units within a radius of 9500 km around the epicenter, the highest it went was 5 to 6 units within a radius up to 500 km. The amount of energy released (1.8 x 1017 j) at a depth of 630 km is pretty rare and it is why the earthquake is called a phenomenon.

Russia has a lot of earthquakes. More than 20 percent of Russian territory is prone to earthquakes with a magnitude of 7.0 or more. Scientists back then in 2013 didn’t have an accurate way of figuring out where and when the next earthquake was going to take place. Plus, the threat of earthquakes is very undermined and people in Russia didn’t understand the significance of how bad these earthquakes can get and that could result in people being ill prepared. “There is no need for Russia to stop all development in seismically active areas,” says Arkady Granovsky, head of the seismic resilience laboratory at the Russian Center for Seismic Resilience Studies. The engineers believe that they can structure the buildings to be rigid and stable to be able to withstand earthquakes, so less damage happens when one is to strike. This was their preventive measure in place prior to the disaster.

Experts are worried that the number of high rise building that have been made in Russia over the past decade and although there is a rule that any 9.0 magnitude area cannot be over 16 stories, modern buildings are a complex work of a bunch of delicate pieces coming together. Water pipes, central heating, and air conditioning systems contain large amounts of water and if they were damaged during the event of an earthquake, it could slow the evacuation process for the people that are in the building.

All in all, Russia is not giving up in making their structures earthquake proof but what I think is that they are not doing enough and Russia should be in the very least educating their citizens about how to prepare for an earthquake and deal with the aftermath especially in the event of a tsunami. Preparing the citizens that are in an area that is prone to earthquakes could save hundreds of lives. Engineers can continue to try to perfect their earthquake resistant buildings but if the citizens are prepared with the knowledge to say shut off the water when there are pipes leaking or shut off the electricity when the electricity lines or cut or trashed it could save a lot of lives. Teaching the citizens to protect themselves till help arrives is a big thing and, in my opinion, should be heavily brought down on the people of Russia. First aid kids, water, radios, batteries, flashlights, matches, all the necessary things that you would need to have should be in most households that are in areas prone to earthquakes.

So, in the end, I think their measures were effective but more needed to be done to ensure the safety of the citizens and I stated what could be done, in the end, to ensure no lives are lost. In this earthquake, nothing happened because the depth was far too great to cause true damage but in an earthquake such as the one in Sakhalin in 1995 that completely leveled the settlement the people of Russia need to be more prepared. Now there is the technology that the scientists use to detect where and when the earthquakes are going to strike but educating people on the dangers of the earthquake, what to do, and what not to do makes a big difference.