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The Queensland catalog contains a total of 287 earthquakes in the Cairns
map region. The largest recent events in this area had Richter magnitudes
of 5.3 and 5.0 (magnitude 5 earthquakes have the potential to cause serious
damage or fatalities). Both these events struck within about 80 km of Cairns.
Shown here are Richter magnitude ML > 0 events. The seismic network near
Cairns contains too few seismographs to detect most smaller earthquakes.
This is problematic because low level activity is needed to properly analyse
and forecast the hazard for mitigation and preparedness purposes. A reassessment of the earthquake hazard in Queensland conducted
by QUAKES in 1996 suggests that the Mackay to Cairns region may be one of
the higher hazard parts of the state although uncertainty remains high due
to the data limitations. |
