• Question: How are earthquakes predicted?

    Asked by okami13nightfury7 to Hannah on 24 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Hannah Bentham

      Hannah Bentham answered on 24 Jun 2013:

      Earthquakes cannot be predicted and I’m not sure we will ever be able to do that.

      We can have an idea of where large earthquakes will occur, because we know they have in the past. But we don’t know WHEN it will happen.

      Also, we know that stress builds up on faults, so large earthquakes do not occur very often on the same part of the fault but may occur on a different part of the fault.

      Our best option is to improve building standards in developing countries so less people are at risk during an earthquake.

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