KUCHING: It is worthwhile to study earthquake activity in Sarawak in order to better understand the phenomenon and mitigate its effects, said Dr Lidyana Roslan, a lecturer at Universiti Malaysia Sarawak’s (Unimas) Faculty of Engineering (Mechanical Engineering).
Pointing out that there was an earthquake in Kapit 27 years ago which registered above 4.0 on the Richter scale, she believed that this phenomenon had a cycle.
“We do not know if it is a 50-year or 100-year cycle, but it occurred 27 years ago and we do not know when it will occur again,” she said, explaining that the measurement of seismic activity in Malaysia was fairly recent.
She said she became interested in studying seismic activity in Sarawak and Borneo as a whole after experiencing the Fukushima earthquake in 2011 during her years of tertiary education in Japan.
“Besides that, there was an earthquake in Ranau, Sabah in 2015. I was curious why this happened.
“When I studied it, it appeared that it was the cycle of the Rajang-Crocker Belt. Basically, there is a fault line there and it is starting to get active,” she said in an interview with New Sarawak Tribune today.
She said that upon further investigation, she discovered that the Kapit earthquake occurred 27 years ago.
“If you look at the Kapit and Belaga region, the Murum Dam, Bakun Dam and Baleh Dam are coming up. So that area has many pressure holes from big dams,” she said.
Lidyana said Dr Raudhah Ahmadi from Unimas’ Faculty of Engineering had invited her to join the seismic activity study due to the former’s expertise in 3D simulations.
She pointed out that while mega structures such as dams were constructed to withstand earthquakes, the same could not necessarily be said for surrounding structures.
“How about the villages beside the dams? How about landslides?,” she questioned.
Drawing on her experience of studying in Japan for a decade from 2007 to 2017, she said the people there were trained from a young age on what to do in the event of an earthquake.
“The most noticeable thing I observed from them is that they do not panic. They know what to do as they have been trained well,” she said, adding that Japan usually experienced larger earthquakes of 6.0 of 7.0 on the Richter scale.
She said the Japanese were very systematic and had standard operating procedures in place for different groups should an earthquake take place — be they children, adults, police and so on.
As an example, she said students’ school bags were very hard — serving as protection or a floating device in the event of a disaster.
“For adults, they usually have an operational escape bag and locker, as well as a designated location for hazard protection such as a bunker,” said Lidyana.
