Meteorologist Bill Martin explains the Pacific Subduction Zone, and shows some great graphics to help visualize what's happening in the Pacific Ring of Fire lately. He also repeatedly says to just "be calm" during an earthquake, and just act intelligently. The majority of the time, very few people are injured in earthquakes, even large ones.
Over the last few weeks, I started having videos pop up on YouTube about earthquakes and volcanoes around the Pacific Ring of Fire. I didn't think much about it. I watched a video about the earthquake swarm around Mount Rainier in early July and thought, "Hey, maybe the Ring of Fire is waking up a bit." The big earthquakes since in Alaska and Kamchatka, and Kamchatka region tsunami, along with other quakes, make it seem like we're heading into a more active period around the Pacific Ring of Fire.
For any who don't know, the Pacific Ring of Fire is the name for the line of tectonic plate seams that go up the west coast of South America, through Central America, up the American and Canadian west coast, along the southern Alaska coast, peninsula, Aleutian Island chain, over to the Russian east coast, down through the east coast of China, Japan, through Indonesia, and through the western Pacific islands to New Zealand.
Because of all these major and minor plates of the earth grinding together, this Ring has lots of earthquakes and lots of volcanoes. Watch the 15 minute video above for a good explanation of why these earthquakes are happening in these areas, why some volcanoes are a bit more active, and what this means for us here in California, and along the North American Pacific Coast. Don't believe the crazy hype videos. This group of plate seams and faults seams to be getting more active, but that doesn't mean "The Big One" is coming next week, or that "California's going to fall into the ocean,"as so many people across the U.S. think. California is not going to fall into the ocean. The area west of the San Andreas fault will, in 30 or 40 million years, slowly carve away and become a big, 400 mile long island, off the shore of mainland California. That's millions of years away.
Bill Martin explains in the video above why a large earthquake off the coast of the far north part of California is our biggest threat. That could lead to tsunami damage in the Bay Area, and maybe to the L.A. area, to a small extent. Maybe. But down here in Southern California, that's not a major threat. Again, watch that video for a better understanding of what this recent activity in around the Ring of Fire does and does not mean. Below are videos about the larger earthquakes and volcanic activity this year, to learn more, if you're interested.
Five of the eight earthquakes over 7.0 in 2025 have been around the Pacific Ring of Fire
July 8th week, 2025- Swarm of over 300 small earthquakes in Mount Ranier region, south of Seattle, Washington No eruption expected, it hasn't erupted for over 1,000 years.
Late July, 2025- Axial Seamount- active underwater volcano off of the coast of Oregon has also had swarms of small earthquakes This volcano is far enough offshore and is not believed to pose a serious threat to humans. Scientists are monitoring it, including with sensors and underwater video cameras, and expect to learn a lot during this period of heightened activity.
My tweet from July 17-" #ringoffire firing up? Or just getting a bit restless?" That was a day after the big quake off of Alaska, and after I had watched the video about the Mount Ranier mini-quake swarms, and a short video about the Axias Seamount underwater volcano off Oregon, which had been in the news. It seemed like a potential trend, by that point. I tweeted this before the 7.4 and 8.8 Kamchatka quakes. Yep, Kamchatka seems to have answered that question.
