The other week here in SoCal emergency notification systems were in red alert as the effects of the recent quakes in the Pacific threatened beach-goers with unusually high tides and strong undertows. In the wake of this string of powerful quakes, researchers are scratching their heads, thinking that it may not just be a coincidence.

From the Inquirer article:

On Thursday, thousands of panicked people fled the coast as a rapid succession of large quakes off Vanuatu set off a tsunami warning for much of the South Pacific.

At 10:41 a.m. on Oct. 8, a very deep magnitude-6.7 earthquake was recorded in the Celebes Sea, 320 km south of Zamboanga in Mindanao.

The “remarkable” sequence has prompted veteran earthquake-watcher Gary Gibson to tear up his theory that it all came down to chance and to search for a possible connection.

“I can no longer keep using the response that it’s all a big coincidence, can I?” Gibson, senior seismologist at Environmental Systems and Services consulting group in Australia, told Agence France Presse.

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Read the full article here.