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Myanmar earthquake: Is this the first fault rupture on film?



A security camera captured the moment of the Myanmar earthquake of March 28, 2025, when the ground split as one plate slid past the other. Video via 2025 Sagaing Earthquake Archive.

Myanmar earthquake moment caught on video

This may be the first fault rupture ever caught on video. On March 28, 2025, a magnitude 7.7 earthquake hit the southeast Asian country of Myanmar. And a security camera for GP Energy Myanmar was rolling, capturing the moment when the Earth split. Geologists are sharing this video on Bluesky and expressing their amazement at everything this video captures.

There’s a lot to see in this video, and you likely won’t catch it all the first time. The most dramatic movement is when the entire landscape on the right side of the screen slides forward by several feet. Cracks appear in the driveway. A transmission tower topples. A water tank falls off a building. The ground between the two buildings at far left buckles and falls away. Potted plants along the drive go sliding past ones that are on the opposite side of the plate. A distant tree at top center jerks just before we see the movement in the land closer to the camera. A bird appears to make a hasty flight downward.

What else can you see in this video?

Movement along a strike-slip fault

The March earthquake occurred near the Sagaing Fault, a major fault line running through Myanmar. It’s where the Indian plate and Sunda plate meet. Where plates meet, they can move toward each other, away from each other, or slip past each other. This video provides clear evidence of the side-to-side movement of a strike-slip fault. One side of the land clearly moves past the other.

Earthquakes occur along strike-slip faults because pressure builds up between the two plates. The shearing forces eventually cause a block of Earth to shift. In the video here, we see the right side move laterally. So this is an example of a right-lateral strike-slip.

The San Andrea Fault is a strike-slip fault. In the book The Big Ones by seismologist Lucy Jones, she says the San Andreas fault has been worn so smooth that when the next earthquake hits there, there’s nothing to keep it from growing to a magnitude 7 or 8:

Someday, maybe tomorrow, maybe in a decade, probably in the lifetimes of many people reading this book, some point on the fault will lose its frictional grip and start to move. Once it does, the weak fault, with all that stored energy, will have no way of holding it back.

You can also see radar images from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellites, which caught the before and after of the ground shift in Myanmar.

Where did this video come from?

An account called 2025 Sagaing Earthquake Archive found the video on Facebook and uploaded it to their YouTube page. The video was likely filmed at the Green Power Energy Solar Project in Tha Pyay Wa.

This small village is south of Myanmar’s second-largest city, Mandalay. It would be in the vicinity of the epicenter of the March 28 earthquake.

Bottom line: A camera filmed a rare moment during the 7.7-magnitude Myanmar earthquake from March 28, 2025. It shows a fault rupture in the earth during the strike-slip movement.

The post Myanmar earthquake: Is this the first fault rupture on film? first appeared on EarthSky.



from EarthSky https://ift.tt/XCA6Vbm


A security camera captured the moment of the Myanmar earthquake of March 28, 2025, when the ground split as one plate slid past the other. Video via 2025 Sagaing Earthquake Archive.

Myanmar earthquake moment caught on video

This may be the first fault rupture ever caught on video. On March 28, 2025, a magnitude 7.7 earthquake hit the southeast Asian country of Myanmar. And a security camera for GP Energy Myanmar was rolling, capturing the moment when the Earth split. Geologists are sharing this video on Bluesky and expressing their amazement at everything this video captures.

There’s a lot to see in this video, and you likely won’t catch it all the first time. The most dramatic movement is when the entire landscape on the right side of the screen slides forward by several feet. Cracks appear in the driveway. A transmission tower topples. A water tank falls off a building. The ground between the two buildings at far left buckles and falls away. Potted plants along the drive go sliding past ones that are on the opposite side of the plate. A distant tree at top center jerks just before we see the movement in the land closer to the camera. A bird appears to make a hasty flight downward.

What else can you see in this video?

Movement along a strike-slip fault

The March earthquake occurred near the Sagaing Fault, a major fault line running through Myanmar. It’s where the Indian plate and Sunda plate meet. Where plates meet, they can move toward each other, away from each other, or slip past each other. This video provides clear evidence of the side-to-side movement of a strike-slip fault. One side of the land clearly moves past the other.

Earthquakes occur along strike-slip faults because pressure builds up between the two plates. The shearing forces eventually cause a block of Earth to shift. In the video here, we see the right side move laterally. So this is an example of a right-lateral strike-slip.

The San Andrea Fault is a strike-slip fault. In the book The Big Ones by seismologist Lucy Jones, she says the San Andreas fault has been worn so smooth that when the next earthquake hits there, there’s nothing to keep it from growing to a magnitude 7 or 8:

Someday, maybe tomorrow, maybe in a decade, probably in the lifetimes of many people reading this book, some point on the fault will lose its frictional grip and start to move. Once it does, the weak fault, with all that stored energy, will have no way of holding it back.

You can also see radar images from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellites, which caught the before and after of the ground shift in Myanmar.

Where did this video come from?

An account called 2025 Sagaing Earthquake Archive found the video on Facebook and uploaded it to their YouTube page. The video was likely filmed at the Green Power Energy Solar Project in Tha Pyay Wa.

This small village is south of Myanmar’s second-largest city, Mandalay. It would be in the vicinity of the epicenter of the March 28 earthquake.

Bottom line: A camera filmed a rare moment during the 7.7-magnitude Myanmar earthquake from March 28, 2025. It shows a fault rupture in the earth during the strike-slip movement.

The post Myanmar earthquake: Is this the first fault rupture on film? first appeared on EarthSky.



from EarthSky https://ift.tt/XCA6Vbm

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