A string of major earthquakes along the Pacific Ocean’s ‘Ring of Fire’ has triggered a chain reaction that may soon result in a historic disaster along America’s West Coast.
Geophysicist Stefan Burns told the Daily Mail that there were clear warning signs that the same megaquakes which have struck Asia in recent years are shifting along the Pacific Plate as the gigantic tectonic structure attempts to balance itself.
This will increase the odds of a massive seismic event in California, Oregon, Washington and Alaska, with Burns saying a devastating rupture is possible within the next four years.
Burns said: ‘We are in this time period where we can expect more earthquake activity in California because there’s like a 35-year rhythm there. The last rhythm was back in the ’80s and ’90s.’
‘Because we had Napa 2014 [magnitude 6.0], we’ve had Ridgecrest 2019 [magnitude 7.1], this Ukiah Willits 2026 [magnitude 5.6], so all the way to like 2030 is kind of like when California could have a big, big event.’
Two large earthquakes recently struck the US side of the Ring of Fire, a magnitude 5.2 along Alaska’s border with Canada on July 16 and massive magnitude 7.3 quake near the coast of Chiapas, Mexico on July 17.
Those major disturbances occurred after at least 12 earthquakes stronger than magnitude 7 were recorded on the western side of the Ring of Fire – in Russia, Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia – over the last year.
‘We have all this activity in the Western Pacific, and so there’s this precedent for it to come back and perhaps finally activate in some of these places,’ Burns explained.
The Pacific Ring of Fire has seen more than a dozen major earthquakes along its western side since July 2025, when a megaquake in Russia was detected near Kamchatka
A picture from the movie ‘San Andreas’ gives an idea of the carnage that could be caused by the Ring of Fire igniting
‘For the whole plate to continue doing what it’s doing, and that’s really California and Cascadia, and they’re super overdue, so I mean we don’t know what’s going to happen but it’s all ready,’ he warned.
The Ring of Fire, a 25,000-mile arc encircling the Pacific Ocean, is home to 75 percent of the world’s active volcanoes and suffers frequent earthquakes throughout Southeast Asia, Japan, Russia and Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.
Burns said the magnitude 8.8 megaquake that struck Kamchatka, Russia on July 29, 2025 triggered a seismic chain reaction across the entire Ring of Fire.
This massive quake released huge amounts of built-up stress, which then set off many other faults, causing multiple magnitude 7 earthquakes, dozens of magnitude 6 quakes and hundreds of smaller ones on that side of the Pacific Plate.
According to Burns, a popular commentator who focuses on earthquake science online, the Pacific Plate is like one giant, mostly rigid piece of the Earth’s crust that must stay balanced.
Since so much movement has already happened on the western side, the plate now needs to ‘catch up’ with more earthquakes on the eastern side, including along the West Coast of the US, to release its remaining stress and keep moving properly.
‘We’ve had tons of activity in the Western Pacific, and I do see it moving more towards the East, and I see that really hitting South America and also North America pretty strongly,’ the scientist predicted.
Burns told the Daily Mail there were clear warning signs in California right now, particularly around the Garlock Fault near Los Angeles, where a recent earthquake struck directly at its junction with the infamous San Andreas Fault.
He explained that this quake was concerning because the Garlock acts as a major stress transfer point in Southern California, possibly signaling that the region is actively loading up for a major rupture along the 800-mile-long San Andreas fault system.
Data from the US Geological Survey (USGS) showed the July 2025 megaquake in Russia struck about 84 miles east-southeast of Kamchatka, marking the sixth strongest earthquake ever
Geophysicist Stefan Burns has said the Pacific Ring of Fire will eventually need to balance itself by releasing more energy along the US West Coast and South America
Burns said several large-scale changes inside the Earth may be contributing to the recent increase in earthquake activity along the Ring of Fire.
One key factor is the Chandler wobble – Earth’s natural, 433-day wobble as it spins on its axis – which mysteriously disappeared in the 2010s and is now returning; this wobble affects how stress builds up on faults around the world.
A 2025 study published in the Journal of Geodesy confirmed that the Chandler wobble became strangely weak and almost disappeared between 2015 and 2020, and began returning around 2021, but with a mysterious 180-degree phase shift which made it spin in the opposite direction.
Burns explained that when scientists look at past earthquakes in California and throughout the world, a clear pattern emerges where earthquakes were more likely to happen at certain times that match the 433-day Chandler wobble cycle.
The wobble appeared to add a little extra push or stress on faults at regular intervals, making larger earthquakes slightly more likely to erupt during those periods.
The Earth’s magnetic pole was also found to be moving extremely fast across the North Sea during the 2010s, which Burns believes signals changes happening deep in the planet’s mantle that affect plate tectonics.
A massive magnitude 7.3 earthquake struck along the Pacific Ring of Fire near the coast of Chiapas, Mexico on July 17
Burns also theorized that the sun plays a major role in causing earthquakes as well.
During periods of lower solar activity, he noted that earthquakes tend to cluster because changes in solar radiation and plasma (super-energized particles) affect electric currents inside the planet, making faults more likely to ‘slip’ and release seismic stress.
‘When you get a solar flare, that’s charging the ionosphere. You’re creating this push and pull effect with plasma, and you’re generating these electric currents in Earth’s subsurface,’ Burns explained.
‘In general, the sun is the main energetic agent loading our Earth with energy. Almost all the energy here on the planet is being delivered by the sun. We see the high magnitude earthquakes in general cluster around specific space weather influences.’
Burns mentioned that new scientific research showed the San Andreas Fault and the nearby Cascadia Subduction Zone off the coast of Oregon may be able to rupture together in a single massive event.
This could mean a major earthquake on one fault could potentially trigger or combine with the other, creating an even bigger disaster.
While nothing is guaranteed and the timing is not certain, Burns believed the US had slightly more time before a megaquake erupts along the West Coast, noting that patterns along the San Andreas were unfolding noticeably slower than what he observed before major quakes in Asia.
