A strong earthquake in Indonesia shook the island of Java on Monday morning. The quake, with a preliminary magnitude of 6.7, was recorded at approximately 3 a.m. local time. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre issued a “localized” tsunami warning following the quake, but noted there was only “a very small possibility” of a tsunami.
The geographic proximity of Northern Emirates to the seismically active belt of Makran (between Iran and Pakistan) may lead to a potential tsunami risk for which the country is not fully prepared.
In the last three months alone the UAE Civil Defence Department has received as many as 10 reports of earthquakes from Fujairah and its suburbs. In 2010 only five such incidents were reported.
Although seismologists point out that UAE is not located in the seismically active belt and recent quakes in the south and east of Fujairah were caused by quarries operating in the neighbouring state using high explosives, danger still lurks in the East Coast of UAE.
There are no tsunami monitoring and early warning stations to detect if tsunami waves could reach the UAE’s east coast due to its proximity to the seismically active belts – stretching north-west, parallel to the Zagros mountain range, as a result of the collision of the Arabian plate with the Eurasian plate.
Experts are agreed that while tsunami cannot be predicted, the setting up of a centre to monitor tsunami waves can greatly help reduce the damage.
