WEAK EARTH CRUST

Southland Times, Issue 19277, 23 June 1924, Page 3

WEAK EARTH CRUST

WHERE EARTHQUAKES EMANATE. There are several especially weak places in the crust of the earth, Dr Warren D. Smith, University of Oregon professor, said recently in a discussion of earthquakes, states an Associated Press correspondent in the New York Evening Post. “One of these,” he explained, “is in the Straits of Messina, between Sicily and Italy, where, in 1908, a very destructive earthquake took place. Another is the junction of the Pacific with the Indo-Malayau arc. This is in the region of Java and the Philipines. Some exceedingly devastating earthquakes have taken place in those regions. Another place is the Chilian coast, and still another is along the San Andreas Rift in California. “Perhaps the most unstable part of the earth’s crust to-day is in the north-west part of the Pacific, bordering the great Tuscarora Deep. A broad belt of folded rocks includes the entire archipelago of Japan, the Philippines, and New Guinea in the western Pacific, and this belt runs right around the Pacific Ocean. This is the first major feature of the Pacific. East of this region is the great trough known as the Tuscarora Deep. To the south of this, just east of Ibe Philippines, is a still greater deep, which is a continuation of the one east of Japan. With a depth of slightly over six miles, this is the deepest place known in any ocean. To the east of this trough is a submerged mountain range, in fact several, but one in particular, which apparently is rising uid some day will form a new festoon of islands paralleling Japan and the Philippines. According to the latest investigations in the Pacific, great thrusts, due to accommodations in the outer shell of the earth, are taking place in the direction of the Asiatic continent.”