'We don't think this was the big one,' says a scientist in the region. In Padang, rescue workers give up the search for more survivors and concentrate on recovering bodies and clearing rubble.
Reporting from Padang, Indonesia - Expect a far more powerful earthquake than last week's magnitude 7.6 temblor to hit Indonesia's devastated Padang area in the next few decades.
That's the word from a team of leading seismologists, who said the worst is yet to come, although they cautioned that predicting the timing of earthquakes is an inexact science at best.
After a three-day review of seismic evidence using global-positioning equipment, scientists with the Earth Observatory of Singapore, or EOS, found that the earthquake that hit the Indonesian city of Padang did little to relieve the stored tension at the juncture of two tectonic plates.
The EOS team believes that the eventual energy release could result in an earthquake close to the scale of the magnitude 9 monster that triggered the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, killing more than 200,000 in a dozen countries.
"We don't think this was the big one," said Paramesh Banerjee, technical director of EOS, a $700-million government-funded institute for the study of tsunamis, volcanoes, earthquakes and climate. "It can happen any time -- now, in 20 years or more."
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