A magnitude 5.7 earthquake on Friday struck the world’s largest active volcano — Mauna Loa on the Big Island of Hawaii — knocking items off shelves and cutting power in a nearby town, but not immediately prompting reports of serious damage.
The earthquake, which did not cause a tsunami and which the US Geological Survey initially reported as magnitude 6.3, was centered on Mauna Loa’s southern flank at a depth of 37km, 2km southwest of Pahala.
“It shook us bad to where it wobbled some knees a little bit,” said Derek Nelson, the manager of the Kona Canoe Club restaurant in the community of Kona, on the island’s western side. “It shook all the windows in the village.”
There was a power outage affecting about 300 customers in Naalehu that appeared to be related to the earthquake, Hawaiian Electric Co spokesperson Darren Pai said.
The earthquake struck after 10am, less than two hours before an unrelated quake with a preliminary magnitude of 4.6 shook Southern California.
Mauna Loa last erupted in late 2022. It is one of five volcanoes that make up the Big Island, which is the southernmost in the Hawaiian archipelago.
Earthquakes can occur in Hawaii for a variety of reasons, including magma moving under the surface.
In Friday’s case, the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory said the likely cause was the weight of the Hawaiian Islands bending and stressing the Earth’s crust and upper mantle.
Helen Janiszewski, an assistant professor in the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s Department of Earth Sciences, said the Hawaiian Islands lie on the Pacific oceanic tectonic plate and have some of the world’s biggest volcanoes.
“So there’s a huge amount of mass of rock associated with the islands and because of that, it’s actually enough to slightly displace the Pacific oceanic plate beneath the islands, and that force causes earthquakes sometimes” she said.
The observatory said Friday’s earthquake did not affect either Mauna Loa or a neighboring volcano, Kilauea.
There were no reports of damage to telescopes on the summit of Mauna Kea, another nearby volcano that has some of the world’s most advanced observatories for studying the night sky.
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park spokesperson Jessica Ferracane said that while earthquakes are not uncommon, this one was “much more intense” than usual.
LANDMARK CASE: ‘Every night we were dragged to US soldiers and sexually abused. Every week we were forced to undergo venereal disease tests,’ a victim said More than 100 South Korean women who were forced to work as prostitutes for US soldiers stationed in the country have filed a landmark lawsuit accusing Washington of abuse, their lawyers said yesterday. Historians and activists say tens of thousands of South Korean women worked for state-sanctioned brothels from the 1950s to 1980s, serving US troops stationed in country to protect the South from North Korea. In 2022, South Korea’s top court ruled that the government had illegally “established, managed and operated” such brothels for the US military, ordering it to pay about 120 plaintiffs compensation. Last week, 117 victims
‘HYANGDO’: A South Korean lawmaker said there was no credible evidence to support rumors that Kim Jong-un has a son with a disability or who is studying abroad South Korea’s spy agency yesterday said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s daughter, Kim Ju-ae, who last week accompanied him on a high-profile visit to Beijing, is understood to be his recognized successor. The teenager drew global attention when she made her first official overseas trip with her father, as he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Analysts have long seen her as Kim’s likely successor, although some have suggested she has an older brother who is being secretly groomed as the next leader. The South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) “assesses that she [Kim Ju-ae]
In the week before his fatal shooting, right-wing US political activist Charlie Kirk cheered the boom of conservative young men in South Korea and warned about a “globalist menace” in Tokyo on his first speaking tour of Asia. Kirk, 31, who helped amplify US President Donald Trump’s agenda to young voters with often inflammatory rhetoric focused on issues such as gender and immigration, was shot in the neck on Wednesday at a speaking event at a Utah university. In Seoul on Friday last week, he spoke about how he “brought Trump to victory,” while addressing Build Up Korea 2025, a conservative conference
China has approved the creation of a national nature reserve at the disputed Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島), claimed by Taiwan and the Philippines, the government said yesterday, as Beijing moves to reinforce its territorial claims in the contested region. A notice posted online by the Chinese State Council said that details about the area and size of the project would be released separately by the Chinese National Forestry and Grassland Administration. “The building of the Huangyan Island National Nature Reserve is an important guarantee for maintaining the diversity, stability and sustainability of the natural ecosystem of Huangyan Island,” the notice said. Scarborough
RSS