Experts rubbish false claim that 'Malaysia now in the earthquake-prone Pacific Ring of Fire'

The claim was shared here on Facebook on May 4, 2023, by a page called "I Love Borneo" that has more than 100,000 followers.

The post includes an image showing a map and overlaid Malay-language text that reads: "Malaysia is now in the Pacific Ring of Fire, several areas identified as earthquake prone."

The post's caption reads: "According to an expert, a few areas in Sabah and Sarawak have been identified as having the likelihood of experiencing earthquakes that reach a seven on the Richter scale."

It includes a link to an article on the I Love Borneo website that makes the same claim.

Image

Screenshot of the misleading post, taken on May 19, 2023

The article states the claim was made by Professor Ir Dr Azlan based on 25 years of research.

"Several places have been identified that should be on the lookout, particularly Kuala Lumpur, Kuala Pilah in Negeri Sembilan, Manjung and Temenggor in Perak, and Kenyir in Terengganu," the article reads.

It further named several regions in Sabah and Sarawak as prone to earthquakes "up to 7 on the Richter scale", which measures the strength of tremors.

The claim was also shared by another blog site here.

The links to these articles were shared across Facebook here, here and here.

The Pacific "Ring of Fire" is an arc of intense seismic and volcanic activity that stretches through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.

However, geologists reject the claim, saying that Malaysia remains far from the Ring of Fire.

'Quite far'

Dr Nor Shahidah Mohd Nazer, a geologist at the National University of Malaysia, told AFP that even though Malaysians have felt tremors from time to time, this did not mean the country was situated in the Ring of Fire (archived link).

"Malaysia is not in the Ring of Fire, in fact we are quite far from it," she said on May 18, 2023.

Nor Shahidah explained that parts of the country experienced tremors as it was close to Indonesia, which is in the Ring of Fire and seismically active.

Although there was a possibility Malaysia could move into the Ring of Fire, geological processes "do not happen overnight" and this occurrence could take more than a million years, she said.

Image

The Pacific Ring of Fire ( AFP / Sabrina Blanchard, Simon Malfatto)

Professor Chris Elders, a geologist at Curtin University in Australia, also clarified that Malaysia is "not really located in the Ring of Fire" as it is some distance away from the seismologically active areas that form volcanoes and cause earthquakes (archived link).

Elders said the Ring of Fire includes the west coasts of North and South America, the Aleutian Arc to the south of Alaska, the Kamchatka Peninsula in eastern Russia, Japan, the Philippines, the northern parts of Papua and New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, eastern Pacific Islands such as Tonga and Fiji and extending down into New Zealand.

He also said it would take "millions to tens of millions of years" for Malaysia to end up in the Ring of Fire.

"Thus, we won’t wake up one morning and suddenly find that Malaysia is within the Pacific Ring of Fire, although that is not to say that we won’t feel the rumble of an earthquake or more vigorous activity from hot springs and mud volcanoes every now and again," Elders said on May 25, 2023.

He added: "Earthquakes can be felt much further away from plate boundaries, and although Malaysia does experience earthquakes, they are not as frequent or as large a magnitude as those occur in the countries that directly neighbour the Pacific or Indian Oceans."

Out-of-context claims

Keyword searches found the statement by Professor Dr Azlan Adnan, a chief researcher at the University of Technology Malaysia's Seismology and Earthquake Engineering Research Group, was published in Malay-language daily Harian Metro on May 2, 2023, under the headline "Five risky areas" (archived links here and here).

"The country needs to prepare for the risk of earthquakes because Malaysia is no longer outside the Pacific Ring of Fire, instead, it is already in the ring of fire which makes the country vulnerable to the risk of earthquakes," Azlan was quoted as saying.

However, the false posts omitted the latter half of Harian Metro's report, which said current scientific evidence showed Malaysia was hundreds of kilometres away from the Ring of Fire.

A second geologist from the University of Malaya, Dr Muhammad Hatta Roselee is quoted as saying most of the tremors felt in Malaysia are from aftershocks of earthquakes in neighbouring countries (archived link).