Transcript of Discovery interview with Prof Kerry

Published on: Sunday, January 24, 2021

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Discovery presenter Henry Golding on a post-quake investigative climb of Mt Kinabalu.

Henry Golding: The final leg of my journey taking just 300km south to the city state of Singapore

Tucked at the bottom of the Malaysian Peninsula Singapore enjoys a somewhat sheltered geographic position.

It has no history of seismic, volcanic or oceanic disturbances but it is surrounded by some of the most active fault lines on the planet.

Across town at the Earth Observatory in Singapore, a lecture is under way discussing possible causes of the Sabah earthquakes.

Prof Kerry spent 30 years studying and researching earthquake in the US.

In 2008, he moved to Singapore to set up the Earth Observatory here at Nanyang Technological University.

I come with questions about why we are seeing increasing seismic activities in Sabah when the rest of Southeast Asian region remains relatively quiet.

The wonderful thing about science

Prof Kerry: The wonderful thing about science is that mystery always recedes just beyond your grasp even though you grab something you figure out there is always something else to explain a lot of what we want to look at right here.

Golding: The Professor has agreed to share some of his latest findings.

(He starts by calling out a map on Sabah)

Prof Kerry: Alright, so, if you draw a line like that, that’s basically the mystery is this line.

So you can see these little guys (little faults) here are at a place where the land is splitting apart and these out here along the sea floor are very deep and there’s little faults like this.

So one hypothesis which has not yet been proven, is that this block is simply sliding like a giant landslide and these earth quakes in these faults basically allow the stretching at the top and these (other) faults allow the shortening of the base

Golding: So you said this hypothesis is pointing to the fact that Sabah is slowly sinking?

Prof Kerry: The implications are if we look at the GPS data there should be a stretching across Sabah, across here.

When that stretching occurs and then – boom – it is released by an earthquake.

Golding: So this is shifting? (In reference extension tectonics)

Prof Kerry: Gravity basically causing it in this case the entire half of the province (western Sabah) just slide underwater.

Golding: Over the last 100 years record shows that there had been four earth quakes of similar size within a 300km radius of these Sabah earthquake. Could these earth quakes be part of a bigger story, a story that is pointing to the possibility that Borneo is slowly stretching apart along the valleys I saw myself at the epicentre in Kundasang?

Prof Kerry: We think that the very little geo-data that is available suggest that Sabah it is stretching at about 5mm per year so that about one-fifth of an inch a year and that over the centuries builds up enough stretching that the sponge – the rocks: boom (snap).

Golding: So does this ongoing stretching across Borneo suggest that Sabah is due for another earthquake in the coming years?

Prof Kerry: The laymen have to realise that science doesn’t happen overnight, that predictions are made overnight, just like a parent knows that he/she cannot expect a five-year old and next day ends up being a professor. So there is a 20-year growing up process between a five-year old and a 25-year old. So we are at the five- year old stage right now in Southeast Asia with regard to earthquake research.

Golding: My journey has revealed that unravelling the … cause of the Sabah earthquake remains an ongoing scientific mission – a mission to eventually benefit future generations as they begin to make sense of their world.

Survivor pupil interview: I remember my best friend because he died on the day itself. I remember the happy times we had with my friends because we went up together the after that he’s gone – quite hard for us to move on

Golding: In my mission to decode the Sabah earthquake, a fascinating journey sometimes went beyond the science – a journey that reminded me that life on this planet with it fleeting moments and that our sense of mortality should never be forgotten.

‘The laymen have to realise that science doesn’t happen overnight, that predictions are made overnight, just like a parent knows that he/she cannot expect a five-year old and next day ends up being a professor.’