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Natural Awakenings Greater Boston - Rhode Island

Capturing an Earthquake

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On March 28, 2025, a powerful 7.7 earthquake struck central Myanmar, near Mandalay. It was the second-deadliest earthquake in the country’s modern history. Geologists determined it was a strike-slip fault quake, where two large sections of the Earth’s crust move horizontally past each other along a vertical fracture, resulting in a split of the ground along a clear line.

What made this event unique is that it was caught on a closed-circuit television camera. A research team from Kyoto University examined the video frame by frame and found the fault moved on a slight curve more than eight feet in 1.3 seconds. The video can be viewed at TinyURL.com/Myanmar-Quake.