The June 9 Bolivia and March 9 Fiji Deep Earthquakes of 1994

The June 9, 1994 Bolivia earthquake (Mw = 8.2) occurred in the pronounced bend in the morphology of the deep South American slab, where several dynamic arguments can be put forward to explain the apparently anomalous mechanism and the horizontal fault plane; the size of the event is huge but expected when the regional seismicity of the whole century is considered. The March 9, 1994 Fiji earthquake (Fiji = 7.5) suggests that a new mode of seismic deformation is active in the northernmost termination of the Tonga-Fiji slab, cutting across the dense cluster of seismicity of the last 30 years; the size of the event is probably close to the largest to be expected over a century in this area, having the steepest frequency-moment distribution of all global deep seismicity.

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