Tsunami quake may have activated Thai fault line

Tsunami quake may have activated Thai fault line

Thai researchers and media warned on Thursday the earthquake that triggered the Asian tsunami may have moved the tourist resort island of Phuket by 15 centimeters (six inches) and activated an offshore fault line.

"We have sent a team to investigate initial reports that Phuket as well as the whole area (in the Andaman Sea) has shifted southwest," the head of Chulalongkorn University's survey engineering department, Chugiat Wichiencharoen, told AFP.

The shift was noticed by a team of international experts from France, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Netherlands and Thailand which reported the findings to the university survey team.

"The shift is a large one if you consider that the usual rate is about two millimeters a year," said Chugiat, adding the change would however be unnoticeable to people living in the area.

Geologists were more concerned with a 10-centimeter crack discovered offshore in Ranong province near a passive fault line that crosses the border between Thailand and Myanmar, said the Bangkok Post newspaper.

It quoted a report saying villagers had found "a stream of bubbles popping up from the crack in more volume and at a speed greater than those of boiling water."

The director of Thailand's Geology Office told the rival Nation newspaper a one-kilometer stretch of the ocean floor appeared to have split open as a consequence of the quake some 500 metres offshore and seven meters under the water.

"It's possible that the December 26 earthquake has revived the dormant Ranong fault. When a fault becomes active it releases bubbles," he said.

He did not say what the possible consequences of a reactivated fault line would be.

The tsunami that killed nearly 220,000 people around the Indian Ocean was triggered by a powerful earthquake, registering 9.0 on the Richter scale, that struck off Sumatra, Indonesia. -- AFP