The powerful 7.7-magnitude earthquake that hit Myanmar was “not an unexpected event,” Shengji Wei, principal investigator at the Earth Observatory of Singapore told CNN’s Rahel Solomon.
Friday’s earthquake occurred along a segment of the Sagaing Fault, a major geological fault line that has historically seen big earthquakes, said Wei, who has been investigating the “seismic hazard” in Myanmar for 10 years.
“It has been quiet since about 200 years ago. Based on these historical studies as well as modern geophysical investigations, we (knew) that this place, this segment of the fault, (was) likely to rupture as a big earthquake in the near future,” Wei said, adding that he had communicated the risk to the Myanmar government and local scientists.
“So this earthquake, to us, was not unexpected.”