Philippine Earthquake Mechanism starts to creep

 

The basin is quite like the Christchurch basin.  During the earthquake, the ridge goes up and the basin goes down.  I'm expecting to see creep along the basin edge, but it doesn't seem to be there.  Doesn't mean much, the edges could go at any time, with about the same odds as any earthquake in the region.  

I was not expecting to see creep towards the major subduction zone.  That means some compression stress has gone that way to the sea.  We can expect another M8 in this mirror zone, but with no clue as to when.

In the continental regions, we can get a thrust earthquake like this, and nothing else after.  All these earthquakes are a result of stress, strain, and fluid motion.  In the very dry regions you will not get earthquakes, there must always be water (to 90%).  In North America, we have the New Madrid seismic zone associated with the Mississippi River, and we have the Hamilton Fault near Toronto.  They were having fun in Oklahoma for a while injecting fluid, which would have made a third M8 zone, but they wisely stopped.

Water adds the 'stick-slip' power.  Dry rock just grinds along with constant friction.  S-s is being barefoot in the 1950's tub, and suddenly slipping.  The friction goes to zero.  All earthquakes work like that, but it is not appreciated with the big guys.  They still test dry rock.  

Again, none of these observations mean much over the regional seismic hazard, which is defined as the probabilities of certain ground motion.

If I were living there, I would actually work on my handy-dandy accelerometer system and measure buildings.  You can tell immediately if somebody left out the steel, and then I would be shot.  I hear the trumpykids are big into sand castles, and other human and environment disasters.

We shall see if this earthquake replaces Turkey as the biggest corruption earthquake.  At least they had little stringers of steel for show.  In those days we had some hard-hitting investigators paid by the US nuclear plants.  Now, I don't expect to see anything.  Taiwan is the best for freedom of information.

ps I was at a cottage deep in the forest, with no Internet.  Yuck, lots of mossies.  Lots of earthquakes in Asia during this time, but a cluster like that never means anything.

ps and this is meaningless, it has no physics.

ps despite what I'm saying about nobody can predict anything, if you really want the date and time to the nearest second, of the next earthquake, send me coffees.  No refunds.