Magnitude-3.3 earthquake strikes Vietnam’s Mang Den, no damage reported

Mang Den is a formerly commune-level town of Kon Tum Province and now under the jurisdiction of Quang Ngai Province, following the recent major administrative restructuring in which 63 Vietnamese provinces and cities were reduced to 34 and local administrations being divided into provinces/cities and wards/communes, effective July 1.

The current Quang Ngai is formed by merging Kon Tum and Quang Ngai Provinces.

Nguyen Xuan Anh, director of the center under the Institute of Earth Sciences, confirmed the same day that the quake was classified as level-zero natural disaster risk.

Monitoring of seismic activity in the area is ongoing, he said.

Earlier this month, two similar earthquakes—3.3 and 2.6 in magnitude—were recorded in Kon Plong and Son Ky Communes of Quang Ngai Province.

These two incidents also posed no natural disaster risk.

Since 2021, hundreds of earthquakes have rattled the former Kon Tum Province, especially in the former Kon Plong District.

The strongest was a magnitude-5.0 quake on July 28, 2024, while an earlier event took place on August 23, 2022, reaching a magnitude of 4.7.

Anh attributed the continued seismic activity to ‘induced earthquakes.’

“Preliminary studies suggest earthquakes will likely continue in the former Kon Tum in the coming time, though they are unlikely to exceed magnitude-5.5,” he said.

More in-depth research is urgently needed to better understand seismic activity in the region.

Currently, the Institute of Earth Sciences operates 11 monitoring stations across the former Kon Tum to support ongoing assessments.

In Vietnam, earthquakes between magnitude-2.0 and -4.0 are considered weak.

Those in the 2.0-3.0 range are usually only faintly felt and cause no damage, with over a million such events occurring worldwide annually.

Earthquakes between magnitude-3.0 and -4.0 are slightly more noticeable and may cause minor vibrations indoors, but they rarely cause damage.

Globally, more than 100,000 such quakes occur each year.