Last Saturday Nepal was shaken by an earthquake of magnitude 7 on the Richter scale, leaving behind more than four thousand dead in the country and numerous victims in surrounding areas such as India or Bangladesh. It had been 81 years that something like this had not been experienced, specifically since 1934 when an earthquake killed 17 thousand people who were in Kathmandu, capital of Nepal.
But the Nepal earthquake, according to geologists, it is part of a »domino effect» that shapes the continent.
The planet is divided into tectonic plates, on the edges of which are the so-called failures. The best known is the San Andrés Fault, located in western North America, and which is increasingly dividing that area of North America. Thanks to the movements of these, the general view of our home changes, very slowly, separating continents or creating mountains. But these shocks can be dangerous for living beings, since they cause earthquakes or tsunamis, depending on where the mentioned faults are located.
Seven centuries ago, on the Indian-American plate, two great tremors arose. The earthquake in Nepal this weekend would be the result of accumulated stress on the fault since then. Laurent Bolinger of the French Commission for Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy and his team anticipated a few weeks ago that a very powerful earthquake would occur right where it happened.
The group of scientists were able to discover the existence of previous tremors by digging trenches along the fault that runs through Nepal from west to east. Until now, have found traces of seismic tremors from the year 1255, 1344 and more recently from 1934. Because of the likelihood of a pattern, the scientists became concerned.
So much so that according to Bollinger new earthquakes could occuras the one that occurred just a few days ago was not powerful enough to break the earth. Thus, tension could be building under the surface again.