More Earthquakes in the Philippines

More Earthquakes in the Philippines. In the first two months of 2016 we recorded more earthquakes than in the previous years.

In two first months of we counted 2016 an average of 7.2 earthquakes per day. In 2015 they had been 4.5 earthquakes and in 2014 5.5 quakes per day. This is a really significant increase. The average magnitudes 3.1 to 3.2 and the average depths 32 to 38km remained almost constant.

Most active are the following regions:

• The Lubang Fault between Mindoro and Batangas
• Southern Calabrazon around Lopez
• The Philippine Trench off the coast of Siargao Island
• The Panay Gulf between Negros and Panay
• The southern end of the Philippine Trench

Bohol is calming down

After the devastating earthquake on  October 15 2013, Bohol continued to tremble for over 24 months. The seabed and the whole island raised. In Loboc and on the western coast between Punta Cruz and Loon, the width of the beaches increased dramatically. But during fall 2015 and now in 2016 Bohol calmed down. Below are the Bohol earthquakes of 2014, 2015 and the first 2 months of 2016.

2014	2015	2016 (until march 3)

Click on the maps to enlarge

Southern Calabarzon is very active

The region of southern Quezon province around Lopez counted already 25 earthquakes this year. Four of these earthquakes were of medium magnitude between Mag.4 and Mag.6. In 2014 and 2015 we recorded only one weak earthquake per year in this region. This region is depicted in the title image.

Angry against PHIVOLCS

After years of manually recording the earthquakes in the Philippines because of very bad data management at PHIVOLCS, we were happy to announce on September 7, 2015 that PHIVOLCS had improved the quality of their earthquake data. Since then, our robot did scan the PHIVOLCS earthquake page once per hour. This allowed us to update our maps automatically. But since February 28 this year, PHIVOLCS refuses our robot access to their page. Why? Until now we didn’t get any answer. We have again to do the silly job manually. It only takes 5 minutes per day, but it’s still silly to do manually a perfect automatic job.

More Earthquakes?

You can verify yourself. Our Earthquake page shows you the accumulated 2016 earthquakes, the most recent earthquakes and the strongest earthquakes. At this very moment we recorded number 445 this year.

[GARD]