Geneva: Tens of thousands of people have had their lives disrupted in the past week by seismic and volcanic activity along the Ring of Fire, reports BBC. An earthquake off Alaska, an avalanche and volcanic eruption in central Japan and a volcano squirting lava in the Philippines all occurred within days of each other. It led the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction to send a tweet on Tuesday warning that the Ring of Fire was “active”. Many are asking whether there is cause for concern that something more serious might happen. The Ring of Fire refers to a string of volcanoes, earthquake sites and tectonic plates around the Pacific. It spreads across 40,000km (25,000 miles) from the southern tip of South America all the way to New Zealand.

Roughly 90% of all earthquakes occur along the area and the ring is dotted with 75% of all active volcanoes on Earth, that’s 452 individual active volcanoes. This week alone, a 7.9-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Alaska in the US. The quake briefly triggered a tsunami warning for coastal areas of Alaska and British Columbia in Canada. On the same day, one soldier was killed and at least 11 others injured in central Japan by an avalanche that may have been triggered by a volcanic eruption.