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Magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 Earthquakes Strike Venezuela, Followed by 6.9 Quake Off Japan
Two magnitude 7-plus quakes hit Venezuela on June 25, followed within 30 minutes by a magnitude 6.9 event offshore Japan. A magnitude 6.5 quake struck Sarangani, Philippines, the next day.
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Two earthquakes with magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5 struck Venezuela on June 25 within 39 seconds of each other near the town of Yumare, about 200 kilometers west of Caracas, followed less than 30 minutes later by a magnitude 6.9 quake offshore northern Honshu, Japan. Both had focal depths shallower than 20 kilometers and were generated by faults in the Boconó-Morón-El Pilar Fault System.
It was produced by thrust faulting where the Pacific Plate subducts beneath the Okhotsk microplate along the Japan Trench. A magnitude 5.6 earthquake had occurred in northern California about seven hours earlier, generated by a fault related to the San Andreas Fault that runs more than 1,200 kilometers from San Francisco to San Diego.
On June 26 at 7:34 PM Manila Time, a magnitude 6.5 earthquake struck Sarangani in the Philippines.
Mario A. Aurelio, a professor at the National Institute of Geological Sciences at the University of the Philippines, said the event is likely an aftershock of the magnitude 7.8 earthquake that hit the region on June 8.
The Venezuelan events have been interpreted by some scientists as a doublet involving two distinct faults operating independently but close in space and time.
