Earthquake today: 5.7 magnitude quake hits Mauna Loa volcano on Hawaii's Big Island
California. Mauna Loa last erupted in late 2022. It’s one of five volcanoes that make up the Big Island, which is the southernmost in the Hawaiian archipelago.
Earthquakes can occur in Hawaii for a variety of reasons, including magma moving under the surface. In Friday’s case, scientists believe the likely cause was the weight of the Hawaiian Islands bending and stressing the Earth’s crust and upper mantle. That's what caused a magnitude 6.9 earthquake that struck off Kiholo Bay on the Big Island’s northwest coast in 2006.
That temblor damaged roads and buildings and knocked out power as far away as Honolulu, on the island of Oahu, about 200 miles (322 kilometers) to the north. Helen Janiszewski, an assistant professor in the University of Hawaii at Manoa's Department of Earth Sciences, said the Hawaiian Islands lie on the Pacific oceanic tectonic plate and have some of the world’s biggest volcanoes. “So there’s a huge amount of mass of rock associated with the islands and because of that, it’s actually enough to slightly displace the Pacific oceanic plate beneath the islands," she said.
“And that force causes earthquakes sometimes." This type of earthquake tends to occur several tens of kilometers beneath the Earth’s surface in the mantle, Janiszewski said. Quakes caused by moving magma tend to hit more shallow depths. The observatory said Friday's earthquake didn’t affect either Mauna Loa or a neighboring volcano, Kilauea.
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