Russian scientist predicts disastrous earthquake in Caucasus

PanARMENIAN.Net - The head of the Laboratory of Regional Geology and Tectonophysics of the Pacific Ocean Institute of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Valery Abramov said that an earthquake will strike Caucasus soon.

Earlier he stated that scientists of the Russian Far East forecasted the latest devastating earthquake in Japan. They published a relevant article back in 1997 and brought it to the notion of the country's authorities through the general consulate in Vladivostok.

"Caucasus will present seismic hazard in the near future," said Abramov. He hinted that the earthquake will be as disastrous as the 1988 earthquake in Spitak, which claimed lives of 25,000 people.

"This is not only my opinion. These are results of researches by a methodology developed by the Far Eastern scientists. The method defines cycles of discharge, i.e. the cyclic recurrence of this geological process," RIA Novosti quoted Abramov as saying.

A massive earthquake, 9.0 on the Richter scale, unleashed a huge tsunami which crashed through Japan's eastern coastline, on March 11. According to the updated data, 13,000 people are considered to be killed or missing.