Big quakes so close 'abnormal'

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The recent earthquakes in Samoa and Indonesia have one researcher asking whether Australia may be to blame.

Dr Huilin Xing, from the University of Queensland's Earth Systems Science Computational Centre (ESSCC), said the motion of the Australian tectonic plate probably caused one of the quakes, then the other.

The two quakes, measuring 8.0 and 7.6 on the Richter scale, occurred off the coasts of Samoa and Sumatra on September 29 and 30, respectively.

"From the observations, there were similar correlations of the quakes in the different places," Dr Xing said.

"For two great earthquakes to occur within hours in such a way, it is abnormal."

However, Dr Xing said the three earthquakes near Vanuatu on Thursday morning would not have been related to the Australian tectonic plate as they were located in the middle of another plate.

Dr Xing said since the start of 2004 there had been about 40 earthquakes measuring greater than or equal to 7.0 on the Richter scale along the boundary of the Australian plate.

These earthquakes have resulted in almost 240,000 fatalities, with the most devastating accounting for 228,000 deaths after it triggered a tsunami on Boxing Day in 2004.

"From research, we can expect that if an earthquake is larger than magnitude 6.5 there may be a tsunami," Dr Xing said.

In the wake of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, Dr Xing's team started to study the Sumatra region as a high-risk zone for seismic and tsunami activity.

Using advanced computer simulation software developed by Dr Xing's team over seven years, they predicted three large Sumatran earthquakes.

Dr Xing said in the light of so much activity occurring at the edge of Australian plate, Australia was also under threat from earthquakes and tsunamis.

"Australia is mostly surrounded by subduction zones," he said.

He said these zones were notorious for subduction earthquakes caused when one plate moves under another, pushing it and the water above it up.

"If a large subduction earthquake occurred in the deep water regions such as south of New Zealand or west of the Solomon Islands, it would impact the eastern coast of Australia," he said.

- AAP 

- AAP