4-28-15 everest quake-uw madison geologist

A UW Madison geologist and tectonics expert tells WFDL news this past weekend’s earthquake in Nepal is not a surprise.   The magnitude 7.8 earthquake Saturday has killed and injured thousands.   Professor Chuck DeMets says  a major quake in that region of the world had been predicted for some time.  “I wasn’t surprised.  The earthquake has been predicted or forecast for a long time and that’s a region where historically there have been many magnitude 8 earthquakes or on that order,”  DeMets told WFDL news. DeMets says the Himalaya mountains are a reflection of the collision of two tectonic plates and are relatively young mountains in geologic time.   “The high Himalayas are the area where the India tectonic plate is pushing northward beneath the Eurasian plate.  So at the area where they contact there’s an enormous fault that’s developed in the continent along which the Himalayas are riding upward into the atmosphere.”   DeMets says the fault in the Himalayas is similar to the San Andreas fault along the Pacific coast line.

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