Earthquakes

[rynner2]

Bit of mergering required, as this is already on the Earthquake thread...

 

[lopaka]

The USGS has also upgraded the earthquake today from 8.2 to 8.7. Mary, Mother of You-Know-Who. That would make it the 2nd strongest (after December's) to strike the earth in well over ten years. And quite comfortably the 2nd strongest I might add.

 

[JamesWhitehead]

The day after Christmas, the day after Easter. This is horrible and uncanny.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tsunami/story ... 91,00.html

2,000 feared dead after quake

· Collapsed buildings hide death toll on Nias
· Tsunami survivors hit by 8.7 magnitude tremor
· Evacuations and terror as alerts issued across Asia


John Aglionby in Banda Aceh, Randeep Ramesh in Delhi, Justin McCurry in Tokyo and Patrick Barkham
Tuesday March 29, 2005
The Guardian


People in Banda Aceh, Indonesia cram onto a scooter and cart as they drive to higher ground following an earthquake. Photograph: Binsar Bakkara/AP
 

Survivors of the Boxing Day tsunami fled their homes last night after a huge undersea earthquake measuring up to 8.7 magnitude struck off the coast of Sumatra, with as many as 2,000 people feared dead on the Indonesian island of Nias, close to its epicentre.

Ninety-three days after giant waves left nearly 300,000 people dead or missing, Indonesian vice-president Jusuf Kalla told a local radio station that between 1,000 and 2,000 people were probably killed on Nias after the earthquake.

He said the estimate was based on an assessment of damage to buildings, not bodies counted.

Agus Mendrofa, deputy district head on Nias, off the western coast of Sumatra, earlier told local radio 296 people had died. He added that hundreds of buildings had been damaged or had collapsed.

Sergeant Zulkifli Sirait of the island's police told AP: "We still cannot count the number of casualties or the number of collapsed buildings because it is dark here. It is possible that hundreds of people trapped in the collapsed buildings died."

The Misna missionary news agency in Rome reported that a huge fire was raging in Gu nungsitoli, the island's main town. "From the window I see very high flames," it quoted Father Raymond Laia as saying by telephone. "The town is completely destroyed."

The town was likely to be 75% damaged, local police said, after the earthquake struck on the same faultline as the Boxing Day quake, 250 miles south-east of Banda Aceh. Altogether, at least 340 Nias residents died and 10,000 were left homeless in the December 26 earthquake.

With a tsunami warning system for the Indian Ocean still the subject of political debate, governments in Thailand, India and Japan tried to warn residents through the radio and television after the earthquake struck 19 miles under the Andaman Sea at 11.09pm local time.

Last night, the threat of a tsunami appeared to recede, with the Thai, Sri Lankan and Indian governments cancelling their tsunami alerts. But in Australia officials warned a tsunami could hit the western coast.

In the Indonesian province of Aceh, tens of thousands of people abandoned tents and temporary homes and ran for high ground in darkness when the earth shook for two minutes, far longer than the much smaller quakes in recent weeks.

Electricity and phone lines were down across much of Sumatra as the earthquake was felt as far away as Bangkok and Singapore, where tall buildings swayed and people in high-rise hotels streamed on to the streets.

Recorded at 8.7 by the US Geological Survey and 8.5 by Japan's Meteorologic Agency, with an epicentre further south than the Boxing Day earthquake, seismologists warned the latest earthquake had the potential to create another destructive tsunami at the end of a week of at least seven smaller aftershocks in the region.

Residents in the Sumatran city of Medan said they felt the tremors were stronger than on December 26.

In Thailand, cracks in buildings appeared, apparently caused by the quake, and people were evacuated from hotels and hospitals in Phuket, Phang-nga and Krabi.

Warnings were issued over the radio by officials charged with setting up a tsunami warning system in the country.

"About 3,000 to 4,000 tourists and locals have been evacuated from Patong and Kamala beaches to higher places," Wichai Buapradit, deputy governor of Phuket, told Reuters. "We've told them to take their valuable belongings and to go to higher places."

Sirens sounded in Sri Lanka as towns on the east coast began frantically evacuating residents. Local media reported people had fled inland well in advance of any official government warnings. Scientists last week predicted a magnitude 7.5 earthquake was possible in the region after the seismic slip on December 26 had piled dangerous levels of stress on to two vulnerable parts of the fault zone off the coast of Sumatra.

"There's been seismic activity throughout this zone that has been ongoing for the last three months," Dale Grant of the US Geological Survey told the BBC. "This is an aftershock of the great quake which is something we see as the earth tries to settle itself."

But Mr Grant said he would not expect potential tsunami wave heights to be "anywhere near as large" as those that pounded coastlines on Boxing Day because the quake was less strong. The December 26 event measured 9 magnitude and left 1.5 million homeless across 11 countries. The British Geological Survey said yesterday's earthquake "occurred close to the epicentre of the Boxing Day quake".

"It could be described as the largest aftershock of this event," said senior seismologist David Booth. He said there was a high probability of a tsunami occurring "but because the earthquake is of such a shallow depth and is offshore, it would be on a much smaller scale than the Boxing Day disaster".

India said it had issued a tsunami warning as a precaution and put troops on alert along its coastline, but said it had no evidence or reports of any deadly waves.

In the Indian-controlled Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which have been rocked by 100 aftershocks since the December tsunami, local authorities issued a tsunami warning asking local people to vacate the coast. Scientists at Hyderabad's National Geophysical Research Institute interviewed on Indian television warned that if a tsunami was to be generated there was a three-hour window before the coast would be hit.

On Sunday, a quake measuring 6.4 came 40 minutes after midnight local time in Indonesia's eastern province of Maluku. A second aftershock, measuring 6.0 came seven hours later. On Friday, a 5.9 quake hit near Banda Aceh.

Despite panic and evacuations, there was also complacency on the streets of the devastated areas that have become weary of aftershocks. With no sign of a tsunami two hours after the tremors, many Indonesians roused from sleep returned to their beds.

 

[rynner2]

The day after Christmas, the day after Easter. This is horrible and uncanny.

No doubt certain religious extremists will make capital out of it, although it will be interesting to see who, and how.

 

[SniperK2]

It looks like that region has entered into a period of unstable activity, ( sorry do'h, I know ) after the Tsunami, they were talking about that happening, expecting it, from one interview I listened to, I don't know that the experts would be very surprised.

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

Wed. Mar. 30 2005 8:55 AM ET
SciTech


Latest earthquakes surprise seismologists

Associated Press

The latest deadly earthquake off the coast of Indonesia wasn't unexpected but may have arrived earlier than experts anticipated.

After the December 26 quake that sent out a devastating tsunami, every seismologist knew that the earthquake potential of nearby faults had increased, Yale University seismologist Jeffrey Park said in a telephone interview.

"But I don't think any one of us would have predicted it would have occurred in three months, at this magnitude," he said.

Dave Oppenheimer, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif., noted that the December quake, to the north, released a lot of stress, but also increased the stress on nearby fault zones.

The area of Monday's quake had a major tremor in 1861 and had been storing up tension since then, he said, so the December quake dumped stress onto an area that was ready to go.

Another section, southeast of Monday's quake, last shook in 1833, Oppenheimer added. "Will it go tomorrow, will it go in two months, two years, two decades ... we don't know, but it will occur," he said.

Aftershocks are common following large quakes. Oppenheimer said, and he called Monday's tremor a large aftershock from the December quake. But Park declined to call it an aftershock, since it wasn't located in the same fault section.

"That doesn't mean that the two aren't connected; they very likely are connected," he said.

But what seismologists don't understand is the time lag, he said, noting that in the Anatolian fault zone in Turkey and in California, the time scale can be decades.

A 1971 quake in California loaded extra stress on a nearby fault that ruptured in the 1994 Northridge quake, Park said.

"So the correlation is pretty clear but the cause, in terms of knowing the cause well enough to predict when the next one is going to occur, that's still mysterious," he said.

Asked about the likelihood of another powerful Indonesian quake, he responded: "If you would ask me what the odds are in the next three months, I'd say they are low. In the next 15 years I'd say there is reason to be concerned. I'd say let's get that tsunami warning system out there," he said.

Indeed, a new tsunami warning system for the Indian Ocean was scheduled to begin service on Friday, but got an initial tryout Monday, relaying warnings from Japan and the United States that the quake had the potential to cause another great wave.

Ultimately, no serious tsunami was reported, but one could arrive with any future quake, and Oppenheimer noted that there may have been a tsunami that knocked out communications in rural areas and the damage will only be discovered later. The full Indian Ocean tsunami warning system is expected to go into service by 2006.

Why the December quake generated a devastating tsunami and Monday's didn't isn't yet understood, but there are several possibilities, he said.

To generate those great waves, there has to be vertical movement of the sea floor, he said, and Monday's quake was deeper in the Earth than December's, so there may have been less direct effect on the ocean bottom. Also, he said, it occurred beneath an island, reducing the sea floor effects.

In addition, the quake orientation was different. In December the quake energy went east and west, toward Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia. Monday the orientation was south-southeast, directing the energy into open ocean and Antarctica.

Park said in some ways the Sumatra quakes are a wake-up call after a long period of relative seismic quiet following a series of major quakes in the 1950s and 1960s.

"There's probably nothing ominous or portentous in that, by itself," he said. "The largest quakes are relatively rare."

Indeed, Monday's 8.7 quake was the second most powerful since 1964, he said, following the December Sumatra quake which had a magnitude estimated at 9.0 or more.

The December quake was unusual, he added, noting that it persisted for a relatively long time, 400 to 500 seconds -- roughly 6 1/2 to 8 1/2 minutes.

In the 20th century there were only about a half-dozen quakes as large as Monday's and four occurred along one boundary where the giant plates that make up the surface of the planet grind together. That boundary stretches from Russia's Kamchatka peninsula along the Aleutian Islands to Alaska.

Source

--------------------
And on a similar note:

Last Update: Wednesday, March 30, 2005. 8:17pm (AEST)


'Cascade of quakes' possible, scientist says


A prominent seismologist says he cannot rule out the risk of a third big quake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra, where two massive temblors have occurred in just three months.

"The probability of a third quake in the coming months and years cannot be excluded," said Mustapha Meghraoui, who is in charge of active tectonics at the Institute for Planetary Physics in France.

"The theory is that this particular region has seismic cycles of between 150 years and 200 years. The December 26 event caused extreme disruption and one possibility is of a cascade of quakes."

Monday's 8.7 magnitude quake, one of the biggest in a century, came just more than three months after a 9.0 event further to the north.

That quake unleashed a tsunami that scoured the coastline of the northern Indian Ocean, killing more than 273,000 people.

The two events occurred in so-called subduction zones where plates of earth's crust overlap, bumping and grinding.

The December 26 event occurred at a stress point where the Indian plate slips under a tongue called the Burma microplate.

That quake unleashed a huge amount of energy to a Sunda Trench, the undersea fault that runs to the west of Sumatra, where there were big quakes in 1833 and again in 1862.

"It's like two metal springs which are adjoined," Meghraoui said.

"If you tense one spring and then release it, some of the energy is transmitted to the neighbouring spring."

In this region, the Indian Ocean is sliding beneath Indonesia at the rate of seven centimetres a year.

But this is not a smooth movement. Tension builds up as the plates jam, and when the tension is suddenly and violently released the result is an earthquake.

Meghraoui says what significantly ratcheted up the tension was the energy imparted on December 26.

"Cascade earthquakes" - a series of earthquakes that decline in magnitude until the tension is eased - are a known phenomenon in seismology.

In the Nankai Trough, south-east of Japan, five of the seven large earthquakes of the past 1,500 years unleashed earthquakes in the fault's next section within the following five years.

In Turkey in 1999, a 7.4 earthquake in Izmit, south-east of Istanbul, was caused by the stresses of previous temblors on the Anatolian fault.

In turn, this placed stress on the adjoining section of the same fault, unleashing a 7.1 quake at Duzce three months later.

Although tsunami alerts were issued after Monday's event, no big wave occurred, or more exactly, nothing as big as the wall of water up to 10 metres high that caused so much devastation on December 26.

The reason, University of Ulster seismology professor John McCloskey says, is that Monday's quake was around 12-15 times smaller in magnitude than the December 26 behemoth.

"That's crucial because the bigger the energy released, the greater the chance that the seabed will move," Mr McCloskey said.

And, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS), it occurred relatively far below the surface, at a depth of bout 30 kilometres.

In addition, it is unclear whether the seabed was thrust up vertically, which is one of the ideal conditions for making a tsunami.

In a study published on March 17 in the British science weekly Nature, Mr McCloskey's team had warned of the potential for a very large, imminent quake of up to 8.5 magnitude, either on the Sumatran fault, which slices across the Indonesian island, or in the Sunda Trench as a result of the December 26 disaster.

Source

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

Yours perhaps but not mine!!!

Uranus is "responsible" for sea quakes

Ernest Gill | Hamburg, Germany
30 March 2005 03:09

Uranus may be responsible for recent devastating Asian sea quakes because the mystery-shrouded "planet of calamity" is unusually close to the Earth, tabloid newspaper readers in Germany were warned on Wednesday.

Under the front-page headline "Uncanny Uranus", the report in theBild newspaper cited an array of experts, ranging from Nasa scientists to TV astrologers, saying the seventh planet from the sun possesses a "quadripolar" magnetic field that acts as "a giant cosmic vacuum cleaner".

This heavenly Hoover is literally sucking the Earth's tectonic plates out of their beddings, according to Bild, Europe's largest daily newspaper with more than five million readers.

This magnetic pull is strongest along the Earth's equator because the tropics are marginally closer to Uranus than the poles are.

The magnetic forces "are strong enough at the equator to suck up electrically charged dust particles", which could, in turn, disturb the Earth's crust and spawn killer sea quakes and resulting tidal waves.

The reason these natural phenomena have increased of late is that the distant planet's orbit has brought Uranus uncomfortably close to Earth.

Instead of being its usual 3,14-billion kilometres from Earth, Uranus currently is a mere 2,59-billion kilometres away.

And it will remain this close through the year 2012, so Bild warns that we could be in for more uncanny Uranian catastrophes well into the next decade until Uranus slowly retreats back into its proper place in the Outer Solar System.

"With its 11 rings and 18 moons, Uranus is in fact different from everything else in our Solar System," said Edward Stone, Voyager project scientist since 1972.

The German paper quoted Stone at length, saying that Voyager 2 had raised almost more questions than it had solved.

Since launch on August 20 1977, Voyager 2's itinerary has taken the spacecraft to Jupiter in July 1979, Saturn in August 1981, then becoming the only spacecraft to visit Uranus and Neptune, in 1986 and 1989 respectively. Both Voyager 2 and its twin, Voyager 1, will eventually leave our solar system and enter interstellar space.

Voyager 2's images of the five largest moons around Uranus revealed complex surfaces indicative of varying geologic pasts. The cameras also detected 10 previously unseen moons. Several instruments studied the ring system, uncovering the fine detail of the previously known rings and two newly detected rings.

Voyager data showed that the planet's rate of rotation is a brisk 17 hours and 14 minutes. The spacecraft also found that uncanny Uranian magnetic field that is both large and unusual.

Because the axis of Uranus is tilted at right angles to all other planets, its rings are at 90 degrees to the planet's orbit about the sun.

But the paper also quoted astrologists who noted that Uranus has always been an oddity. It has been equated with upheavals, calamitous change and general quirkiness since it was discovered and added to the Zodiac in the late 18th Century.

"There's a planetary constellation right now that could be responsible for flooding and earthquakes," astrologer Karin Stahl said ominously.

And Germany's best-known astrologer, Winfried Noe, who recently launched the world's first occult-arts television network, Astro TV, was quoted as saying the phase of natural catastrophes could last a decade or more because it takes that long for Uranus to transit an astrological sign.

"Uranus is currently in the sign of Pisces," Noe told the paper.

Source

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

Bit of mergering required, as this is already on the Earthquake thread...

The Easter SE Asian quake threads have been moved here - the SE Asian quake and tsunami thread makes sense as a thread focused on the Christmas disaster and its aftermath.

rynner's other tsunami thread has been moved to the tsunami and megtsunami thread:

www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16980

 

[Anonymous]

Sumatra shaken by new earthquake

Sumatra shaken by new earthquake
A strong earthquake has struck near the Indonesian island of Sumatra, say seismologists.
The epicentre of the quake, which had an estimated magnitude of 6.7, was about 120km (75 miles) south-west of the city of Padang, officials said.

There were no immediate reports of damage, but some people fled the coast.

The latest tremor revived fears of a repeat of the 26 December tsunami disaster, which killed an estimated 300,000 people in a dozen countries.

Two-thirds of the deaths occurred in Indonesia.

However, no tsunami warning was issued on Sunday.

Tremor warnings

The latest tremor struck at struck at 1729 local time (1029 GMT) and was felt as far away as Singapore.

Many people were reported to have fled their homes in Padang, after a radio broadcast by city mayor Fauzi Bahar.

"Many people in Padang are panicking," said Yusuf, an official from Indonesia's Geophysics and Meteorology Agency (IGMA).


"People have left their houses, specially those living on the coast," he said, according to the Associated Press news agency.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Honolulu, in the US state of Hawaii, said: "Earthquakes of this size sometimes generate local tsunamis that can be destructive along coasts located within a few hundred kilometres of the earthquake epicentre."

It urged local authorities to "be aware of this possibility and take appropriate action".

Scientists have warned that the Indian Ocean faultline could deliver another major earthquake, and tremors have been felt repeatedly in the area since the 9.3-magnitude jolt that unleashed the 26 December tsunami.

Two weeks ago, an aftershock from that earthquake killed more than 600 people on the Indonesian island of Nias.

On that occasion, rapid response plans put in place after December's disaster were activated promptly.

An integrated tsunami warning system for the region will not be ready until the end of next year, but most countries have a contingency plan.





Were you there? Are you affected? Send us your comments using the form below.



Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/a ... 430255.stm

Published: 2005/04/10 13:40:27 GMT

© BBC MMV

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4430255.stm

 

[Anonymous]

Last Update: Wednesday, March 30, 2005. 8:17pm (AEST)


'Cascade of quakes' possible, scientist says


A prominent seismologist says he cannot rule out the risk of a third big quake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra, where two massive temblors have occurred in just three months.

Well, looks like he wasn't far off.

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

Chile earthquake death toll rises to 11

Wed Jun 15, 2005 12:30 AM BST

By Esteban Medel

IQUIQUE, Chile (Reuters) - Boulders littered city streets and highways in northern Chile on Tuesday after a 7.9-magnitude quake caused landslides and wrecked homes, killing at least 11 people and injuring 200.

The quake on Monday evening in Chile's top mining district also cut off power and burst water mains in and around the port cities of Arica, Iquique and Antofagasta.

Chile's Emergency Bureau ONEMI said most of the quake's victims were killed in landslides. One victim was a 9-month-old baby.

"According to official information we have 11 dead reported," said ONEMI spokesman Mariano Gonzalez.

Television images showed streets littered with giant rocks in Iquique, which has a population of about 140,000, and dozens of collapsed adobe homes in nearby towns.

"Everybody was terrified, people were running everywhere and the air was all dusty," 36-year-old Claudia Herrera told Reuters.

The earthquake damaged or destroyed most of the buildings in Herrera's village of Huara, a hamlet in the mountains near Iquique. Residents were thankful it had not struck later, when they were in bed for the night.

"Fortunately nothing happened to my children," said Herrera, a mother of four.

The temblor caused operations to be suspended at only one mid-sized copper mine and briefly affected one other, leaving larger mines unscathed. Chilean mines produce a major portion of the world's copper supply and account for a big share of the country's economy.

The quake hit at 6:44 p.m. (2244 GMT) on Monday and lasted nearly a minute. An earthquake of 7.9 magnitude is capable of causing widespread and heavy damage.

The U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colorado revised down its estimate of the quake's magnitude slightly to 7.8 from 7.9, but two Chilean authorities kept their readings at the higher level.

Earthquakes of lesser magnitude shook neighboring Peru, as well as Ecuador further to the north, early on Tuesday. They caused minor damage but no injuries, officials in the two countries said.

Chilean government ministers toured the stricken region and President Ricardo Lagos cut short a European tour to travel to the area.

Landslides cut off some roads and highways, and emergency crews were clearing the roads.

ONEMI said the epicenter of the quake was 70 miles (115 km) northeast of Iquique. It was felt throughout northern Chile, in the Bolivian capital, La Paz, and in Southern Peru.


© Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.

Source

And a 6.9 in Alaska and a mild tsunami headsup:

7.8 Earthquake Rocks Chile, 6.9 Quake Hits Alaska

Posted on Tuesday, June 14 @ 13:48:33 PDT by Intellpuke (241 reads)

The U.S. Geological Survey reports a 7.8 preliminary magnitude earthquake struck Tarapaca, Chile at 6:44 p.m. local time (10:44 p.m. UTC). At least 8 people were killed and Chilean authorities say that number could rise.

The quake's epicenter was located 115 kilometers (70 miles) ENE of Iquique, Chile, about 1515 kilometers (940 miles) north of Chile's capital, Santiago, at a depth of 108.4 kilometers (67.4 miles).


Meanwhile, a preliminary 6.9 magnitude earthquake struck the Rat Islands and Aleutian Islands area of Alaska, epicentered 35 miles southeast of Amchitka, and 175 miles southwest of Adak. The West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center issued a bulletin saying that temblor struck at 9:10 a.m. but is NOT expected to generate a tsunami, or tidal wave damaging to the North American west coast.


Chilean President Ricardo Lagos cut short an overseas trip after at least eight people were killed in a powerful 7.9 magnitude earthquake in Chile. Lagos had met the Swedish prime minister in Stockholm but was heading home, a Swedish official said.

Chile's government rushed aid and senior officials to the northern Andean region where the earthquake struck. Three people were killed in falling buildings and five died when rocks crushed their vehicle, officials said.

In the coastal town of Iquique, hundreds of people ran into the streets in fear of collapsing buildings and even a tsunami.

The earthquake, which lasted nearly a minute, was also felt in neighboring Bolivia and Peru. Iquique, which is 115 kilometers (70 miles) from the epicenter, and two other coastal towns, Arica and Antofagasta, appeared to have suffered the worst damage.

The Chilean government said the region had suffered power cuts, telephone communication was down and several houses had collapsed. The authorities by-passed blocked roads by flying 15 tons of relief supplies directly to the stricken area on military cargo planes, the government's Emergency Bureau said.

Relief workers are trying to find shelter for those made homeless by the disaster, it said.

"We cannot exclude the possibility of more casualties," said Interior Minister Jorge Correa.

U.S.G.S. reports the Chilean earthquake resulted from the release of stresses that were generated by the subduction of the oceanic Nazca plate beneath the South American plate. In this region, known as the Peru-Chile subduction zone, ongoing subduction occurs at a rate of about 7.8 centimeters per year in a east-northeast direction. The subduction process generates numerous earthquakes and volcanism, and actively builds the Andes mountains.


The Nazca plate runs the length of South America's west coast.

Source

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

Although a friend in Alska has sent me this link to show that the have so many earthquakes its not something to be worried about:

www.aeic.alaska.edu/Seis/recenteqs/

 

[KeyserXSoze]

One in Chile yesterday. One in California today.

Maybe Mt St Helens is next. Or Yellowstone. :shock:

 

[lopaka]

What the scientist quoted in the bolface doesn't seem to appreciate though, is that that's always what the government scientist says in the part of the disaster movie when you're still yelling at the stupid people on the screen to wake up to what's really going on.

Moderate Earthquake Shakes Southern California

June 16, 2005 — A moderate earthquake shook most of Southern California today, startling people and knocking items off shelves and desks, but there were no immediate reports of significant damage or injuries.

The early afternoon quake had a magnitude of 4.9 and was centered near Yucaipa in San Bernardino County, east of Los Angeles, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. About 25 aftershocks followed in a little over an hour, the strongest estimated at magnitude 3.5.

Residents reported shaking from Los Angeles to San Diego and in counties to the east. Rock slides were reported on Highway 38 in the San Bernardino Mountains.

"All of a sudden I heard a loud rumbling sound, kind of like thunder," said Nick Brandes, 25, manager of a store in Yucaipa. "At the front, all the customers were in a panic. They were all just in a hurry to get out."

Andrea Cabrera, an employee at the Walgreens drug store in Yucaipa, said the store "just had a few items falling, that's all." Customers "were just stunned, and they just stood there," she said.

The Los Angeles Fire Department received no immediate reports of major damage, spokesman Brian Humphrey said. None of Southern California Edison's 4.6 million customers lost power.

It was the third significant quake to hit California this week: A magnitude-5.2 quake shook Riverside County on Sunday, and a magnitude-7.0 quake struck Tuesday under the ocean 90 miles off Northern California.

Thursday's quake occurred near the San Andreas Fault but not on it, said Lucy Jones, scientist in charge of the U.S. Geological Survey office in Pasadena. She said the quake was not a direct aftershock from Sunday's temblor.

"This is not an unusual level of earthquake activity," Jones said of the state's recent quakes.

Channon Kelly, 31, was eating her lunch in downtown Los Angeles when Thursday's quake hit.

"I almost jumped out of my seat," Kelly said. "I'm starting to get freaked out. We've had so many in the last week, the one Sunday and then in Northern California. I could hear the windows rattling and feel it all at the same time."

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press.

 

[waitew]

Actually,the good people at caltec have been very conservative this time.Last Sunday's 5.3 quake near Anza was on a section of the San jacinto fault known as the 'anza gap' an area that is defecient of earthquakes and where a quake of mantiitude 6-7 is expected occur .Last time a moderate earthquake struck near that section of the fault (2001) they said it was 'possibly' a foreshock to the expected larger quake which caused a fuss & then the larger quake never happened.They've learned not to air their suspecions!
After the Landers quake (M7.5) in 1992 they noticed that the aftershocks formed a two sided 'triangle' with the third side being the san Andreas fault...where no earthquakes were occuring.They theorised that the Landers quake could be a precurser the the long over due 'Big one' a 'great' magnitude 8 quake on the southern San Andreas.Today's quake was on the south side of that triangle!I'm sure the scientists do have suspecions about todays quake but are keeping Mum about them..considering their track record who can blame them?
If I'm shook out of bed in an earily morning earthquake in the next few days,I wont be too surprised.

Ps.....though the scientists at caltec deny it,there is something to time of day & earthquakes.The five largest earthquakes recorded in California have all occured in the earily morning hours....between 4 & 9 AM with 6 Am being the peak.I'll bet the next one does too.

 

[lopaka]

That was a very cool & interesting post, waitew, thanks! Stay safe and sound, please.

Here's #4. I figure another 6.0+ in the next 24 hours should fuel at least a little hysteria this weekend.

Fourth quake shakes California


Friday, June 17, 2005 Posted: 8:13 AM EDT (1213 GMT)


EUREKA, California (AP) -- Just hours after a moderate earthquake shook most of Southern California, a strong quake struck off the state's northern coast to become the fourth significant shaker to jolt California this week.

Neither quake Thursday caused serious damage. One person was injured.

A 6.6-magnitude temblor hit about 125 miles off the coast of Eureka around 11:30 p.m., rattling the ocean floor. In the afternoon, a 4.9-magnitude quake struck east of Los Angeles, startling people and knocking items off shelves and desks.

"All of a sudden it just started rocking," said John Napolitano, 45, a campus police officer at Crafton Hills College. "I just sat there and rode it out."

Four significant quakes have hit California this week: A magnitude-5.2 quake shook Riverside County on Sunday, and a magnitude-7.2 quake trembled Tuesday under the ocean 90 miles off Northern California.

Stephanie Hanna, spokeswoman for the U.S. Geological Survey, said Thursday night's quake was likely an aftershock from Tuesday's shaker.

The early afternoon quake was centered near Yucaipa in San Bernardino County, east of Los Angeles, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. About 25 aftershocks followed in a little over an hour, the strongest estimated at magnitude 3.5.

A woman was injured when a light fixture fell on her head in a conference room at Lake Arrowhead Resort, but her injury did not appear to be serious, said a resort employee who declined to be named. She was taken to Mountains Community Hospital but did not want her condition made public, a nursing supervisor said Thursday night.

"I heard a loud rumbling sound, kind of like thunder," said Nick Brandes, 25, manager of a store in Yucaipa. "At the front, all the customers were in a panic. They were all just in a hurry to get out."

Channon Kelly, 31, was eating her lunch in downtown Los Angeles when the quake hit.

"I almost jumped out of my seat," Kelly said. "I'm starting to get freaked out. We've had so many in the last week, the one Sunday and then in Northern California. I could hear the windows rattling and feel it all at the same time."

None of Southern California Edison's 4.6 million customers lost power.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/06/17/calif. ... index.html


EDITED TO ADD: a better report/analysis from the LA Times

June 17, 2005

The Big Quake Question: What Comes After Four?

By David Pierson and Ashley Powers, Times Staff Writers

A 4.9 magnitude earthquake centered in San Bernardino County rattled a large section of Southern California on Thursday, the third significant temblor to hit the state in less than a week.

While the quake did not cause major injuries or damage, it shook nerves across the region just two days after a 7.2 quake off the Northern California coast prompted a tsunami warning and four days after many residents were jolted awake by a 5.2 quake centered near Anza.

Then around 11 p.m. Thursday, a quake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.4 rattled the ocean floor off Northern California, 125 miles west of Eureka. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

It was not strong enough to generate a tsunami warning, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Geological Survey said.

It was, however, probably an aftershock from Tuesday's quake in the area, she said.

Seismologists said that they found no immediate connection between the other quakes. But they were studying whether the Thursday afternoon quake, north of Yucaipa, could be linked to Sunday's Anza quake because they occurred 25 miles apart.

Officials said Southern California usually experiences quakes of this magnitude several times a year, but acknowledged that it's rare for them to occur so close together.

"It is unusual. But we've seen it before," said Caltech seismologist Kate Hutton, noting that quakes often come in clusters over periods of years — a phenomenon that scientists cannot fully explain.

The series of earthquakes was enough to revive anxious chatter Thursday of the coming Big One, a massive quake along the San Andreas fault. Hutton and other experts said they can understand the concern.

"I can empathize why people feel that," added Lucy Jones, the scientist in charge of the U.S. Geological Survey's Southern California office. "We don't handle randomness well. We like to make patterns. The chances are we expect two 'fives' in a week once every 10 years. It's been very quiet. During the '80s, we had earthquakes every day from 1987 to 1994. People are out of habit. They've been lulled down."

The last time the state experienced a similar earthquake cluster was 1986, when the Bishop area was hit by a series of quakes of up to 6.1 in magnitude. Experts said the biggest concern is that smaller quakes could trigger large quakes. Thursday's quake occurred along an as-yet-undetermined "splinter fault" near the San Andreas.

Seismologists said there was a 1-in-20 chance that Thursday's quake was a foreshock — a quake that precedes another quake of magnitude 5 or greater. Such quakes usually occur within hours of each other, but can occur as far apart as five days.

"There's a small chance that this was a foreshock, but it's probably not," Hutton said.

Both this week's Inland Empire quakes occurred near the San Andreas fault, a wide gouge in the Earth's crust where tectonic plates grind against each other. Thursday's quake was centered 8 miles from the fault, while the Anza quake was roughly 25 miles away, along the San Jacinto fault.

The San Andreas, long considered by scientists as a likely source of a catastrophic temblor, has erupted before, causing the great quake of 1906 that devastated San Francisco.

The entire San Andreas fault system is more than 800 miles long and extends 10 miles deep. Scientists say the San Andreas and other faults are storing up energy that is released in an Earth shuddering explosion when the plates slip against one another.

Scientists speculate that earthquake clusters result when energy has been stored for long periods and is released periodically.

"The biggest earthquakes relieve stress," Jones said. "They transfer energy. It relieves stress out of the Earth. When that happens, the Earth relaxes and it stops producing so many small earthquakes."

Also this week, a magnitude 7.8 temblor hit Chile on Monday, killing at least 11 people, and a magnitude 6.8 quake struck the Aleutian Islands off Alaska on Tuesday. Both were preceded and followed by smaller quakes.

Some scientists believe one earthquake can shake loose, or trigger, another nearby or elsewhere in the world. But officials expressed doubts that the Chile or Aleutian Islands quakes were related to those in Southern California because of the distance.

For all their ability to describe the size and location of quakes, scientists acknowledge that there is still much they don't know. Some say that the San Andreas and San Jacinto faults are overdue for large earthquakes, but they cannot say when.

Thirty years ago, seismologists believed they were on the cusp of discovering how to predict earthquakes.

Today, few scientists hold out such hope.

"In terms of earthquakes, the question now is: Will they ever be predictable?" Jones said.

"We know the big picture. But why the earthquake happened today and not yesterday, or last year, or 10 years ago, we just don't know. We also don't know what makes them stop."

Many Southland residents find this uncertainty troubling.

"I think this is leading up to the Big One," said Mentone resident Cora Embry, who grabbed her young son and ran from her home when the shaking began Thursday.

"I feel a big earthquake coming. They say there is no such thing as earthquake weather, but there is."

Thursday's first temblor struck about 1:53 p.m., three miles northeast of Yucaipa, 72 miles east of downtown Los Angeles. The quake, which struck roughly eight miles below ground, triggered rock slides in the San Bernardino Mountains and injured at least one Lake Arrowhead woman when it sent a chandelier crashing onto her head.

In areas close to the epicenter, residents described a shock that almost buckled their knees, caused large panes of glass to shiver and sent furniture pounding against the floor.

While seismologists characterized the earthquake as small — it was strong enough to toss items from shelves and crack walls, but not big enough to damage buildings — residents who lived near the epicenter said it seemed larger.

Redlands resident Susan Mosher was home studying for the bar exam when her dogs began barking, and the interior living room wall began cracking.

"We've had a lot of earthquakes — this is the first one that scared me," Mosher said.

Residents throughout the Los Angeles Basin felt a quivering.

Scientists suggested that the shaking may have seemed much more severe than it was because Southern California is coming off a long period of relative calm, seismically speaking.

"We've had a very quiet decade," Jones said. "We live in earthquake country and we should remember that."

Times Staff Writers Monte Morin, Jia-Rui Chong, Jennifer Delson, Susana Enriquez, Sara Lin, Lance Pugmire, Stephanie Ramos, Susannah Rosenblatt, Joel Rubin, Andrew Wang and Daniel Yi contributed to this report.

SOURCE

 

[Twin_Star]

Fears of the 'big one' fuel rush to buy £137 quake survival kits
From Richard Lloyd Parry in Tokyo

EVER since she was a little girl, Harumi Tanabe has had terrifying premonitions of the coming earthquake.

Her grandmother lived through the last big one, in 1923, and terrified her granddaughter with gruesome stories of people slipping into cracks in the ground. Like Tokyo’s 30 million other inhabitants, Ms Tanabe, 37, experienced yesterday one of those alarming lesser tremors that routinely shake the world’s most populous city. And so, like many others, she has taken precautions to protect herself, her husband, Haruhiko, and Tetsumaru, the Tanabes’ dachshund.

Inside a cupboard in their central Tokyo apartment are earthquake survival kits for man, woman and dog. Those for husband and wife contain bottled water, tinned food and a radio; Tetsumaru’s contains a dog-size stretcher, a deodorant “poop” bag and folding food and water bowls. A pill box, decorated with paw prints, contains vitamin supplements, and there is a first-aid kit with a rectal thermometer. The kit cost 27,400 yen (£137), but to Ms Tanabe it is money well spent.

“There is no doubt that there will be a big earthquake in my lifetime,” she said. “It will be much worse than in the past because of all the new high- rise buildings and the larger population. Many, many people will die.”

Earthquake prediction is a notoriously inexact science, but since the 17th century Tokyo has been destroyed by tremors once every 70 years. The last one was in 1923 — so the next big one would appear to be due any day. More than 140,000 people died in 1923.

Official estimates of the death toll in a similar catastrophe in Tokyo range from 9,200 to a few tens of thousands, depending on the time of day and intensity of the quake.

The earthquake menace has never seemed closer. Thirty people were killed by a powerful tremor in October last year, in a remote mountain region. Then came the Indian Ocean tsunami. “It makes me more and more convinced,” Ms Tanabe said. “Tokyo will be next.”

In the tremor yesterday 62 people were injured after an earthquake of intensity 7.2 shook eastern Japan.

The Newcastle Falcons rugby team, which is on a tour of Japan, was caught in the quake. Reverberations were felt at the team hotel at 12.20pm local time despite its being 200 miles from the epicentre.

Last month, Tokyo experienced its worst tremor in 13 years. No one was injured but the sense of trepidation increased. In other countries those afraid of earthquakes might move city, but Japan is so riven with fault lines that there is no obvious place to run. The result is a boom in products designed to reduce the effect of an earthquake, or at least provide the comforting illusion of safety.

In the Tokyu Hands department store, the emergency goods section has been busier than ever. There you can buy protective hard hats, antishatter gel for windows and struts to prevent bookcases from collapsing. There are collapsing buckets, disposable paper underwear and many kinds of portable lavatories.

The average customer spends 10,000 yen (£50), said Takahiro Ikeda, who manages the department. “It’s the housewives who come in,” he said. “The husbands aren’t really interested, because they don’t spend so much time at home.

“But this stuff isn’t going to save you from a big earthquake, anyway. If you want to be safe it’s your building you want to fix. That, or you move away from Japan.”

DEADLY QUAKES

1707 Earthquake of strength 8.4 causes tsunami that kills 30,000 in Tokaido-Nankaido region

1730 Hokkaido Island, 137,000 people killed

1855 Ansei Edo (6.9-7.1), Tokyo devastated

1896 Sanriku (8.5), causes tsunami, killing 22,000

1923 Great Kanto earthquake (7.9) epicentre just outside Tokyo, kills 142,800 people

1948 The Fukui quake, centred in the East China Sea, devastates western Japan, killing 3,770

1995 Hyogo quake (7.3) hits Kobe, killing 6,430

Source

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

I stumbled across this interesting gadget:

Its a 3D globe showing quake data:

www.starfield-screen-saver.com/quake.html

There is an older free version you can grab from there too.

 

[ramonmercado]

100 years after America's deadliest quake, evidence gone

100 years after America's deadliest quake, evidence gone and questions remain

A century after the deadliest earthquake in American history leveled San Francisco, key events in its aftermath remain shrouded in mystery. Kevin Starr, professor of history at the University of Southern California and California State Librarian Emeritus, argues that ineptitude and fear turned the natural disaster into a manufactured catastrophe.

Some 450 people attended Starr's talk at Kresge Auditorium on Sept. 29—the first of seven in the Quake '06 Centennial Lecture Series presented by Stanford and the University of California-Berkeley. Stanford history Professor David Kennedy introduced Starr, who is author of a dozen books on California, including a multi-volume history. Quoting from Vachel Lindsay's poem honoring William Jennings Bryan, Kennedy described Starr as a "Gigantic troubadour, speaking like a siege gun / Smashing Plymouth Rock with his boulders from the West."

In what Kennedy called a "conspicuously stentorian voice," Starr argued that actions by "the oligarchy of San Francisco" in response to the earthquake revealed the "inner evil subconscious" that belied a city "frightened of its underclass" while "entering upon the high tide of its identity."

True Western spirit

The estimated 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit San Francisco at 5:12 a.m. on Wednesday, April 18, 1906. It shook the city in two phases lasting 45 seconds. "City hall… collapsed instantly," Starr noted. "Facades fell from homes, revealing the furniture within."

Starr said that despite claims after the disaster that "everyone behaved magnificently, with courage, panache and intelligence," as an "example of true Western spirit," city officials made questionable decisions before and after the earthquake.

Three years earlier, Fire Chief Engineer Dennis Sullivan had warned the board of supervisors that the city's water system needed correction, but it was never fixed. Water mains burst in the earthquake. Citing San Francisco Is Burning author Dennis Smith, Starr asserted that the second greatest catastrophe in the event was the death of Sullivan, who was mortally wounded in the earthquake. Sullivan had "extensively studied the [1904] fire of Baltimore," but without his direction, a "fractured leadership," headed by U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Frederick Funston, repeated the mistakes made there.

Starr dismissed as folklore accounts claiming that two firestorms naturally swept through San Francisco after the quake. He noted that Funston had "assumed de facto control of the city" and decided within hours of the quake to fight fire with fire, despite having no experience in firefighting. "The army and a reluctant but bullied fire department seemed determined to destroy San Francisco," Starr claimed. "The black powder used to level many buildings turned [them] into Roman candles.… The more this technique failed, the more it was employed."

Starr jocundly claimed that "one of the gentlemen in charge" of dynamiting buildings was "heavily under the influence of alcohol as he banged away at buildings that otherwise could have been saved." But a report submitted by Capt. Le Vert Coleman, head of the 1906 dynamiting party, suggests a different handling of the incident. Coleman wrote that he found John Bermingham, superintendent of the California Powderworks and a civilian expert on explosives, to be "so far under the influence of liquor as to be of no service, and, lest he should in that condition cause serious accident," Coleman "sent him away."

Questionable judgment

In another example of questionable judgment, Mayor Eugene Schmitz issued a shoot-to-kill order early in the disaster, despite "no evidence whatsoever of wholesale looting," Starr said. "Practically the first thing he says… is that looters would be shot on sight." At least 15 alleged looters were killed.

Rumors and official accounts portrayed San Francisco inaccurately, Starr claimed, including tales of Asian-like "ghouls roaming streets" biting earlobes and fingers off the dead for their jewelry. In the "collective civic meltdown," unassimilated minorities were the first target, he said. Publicly, the controlled language of promotional literature even ignored the earthquake itself. "The accepted, politically correct designation was the Great Fire of April 1906, not the Great Earthquake and Fire," he said.

Katrina parallels

Recent re-examinations of coroners' reports from 1906 have concluded that 3,000 to 5,000 people died during the event, much higher than the official death toll of about 300. Starr asserts that the higher figure was "squelched by an oligarchy eager to rebuild the city, hence to disconnect it from its reputation of being a dangerous place." He added, "Did the denial of these casualty figures… suggest other denials as well?"

The greatest mystery of the earthquake remains the disappearance of its archives. Henry Morse Stephens, a professor of history at the University of California-Berkeley, was commissioned to build an archive of the earthquake for the university's Bancroft Library. After his death in 1919, the library de-accessioned his records. They have never been found.

In comments linking the reconstruction of San Francisco after 1906 to the question of rebuilding New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Starr pitted the geological reasons not to rebuild San Francisco against the intrinsic persistence of cities: "Once they're dreamed… once they've been there, they never disappear."

Starr will repeat this lecture at UC-Berkeley on Thursday, Oct. 20, at 7:30 p.m. in 155 Dwinelle Hall. The next speaker in the series, author Malcolm E. Barker, will continue with historical and social perspectives on the earthquake in his talk, "Through the Eyes of the Survivors," on Tuesday, Oct. 25, at 7:30 p.m. in Kresge Auditorium. Other speakers in the series, which continues to March 2006, will focus on other aspects of the 1906 quake, including Earth science, engineering, preparedness and disaster response. The series is funded by the President's Fund, the John A. Blume Earthquake Engineering Center, the School of Earth Sciences and the Bill Lane Center for the Study of the North American West at Stanford, and the University of California-Berkeley.

Source: Stanford University

http://www.physorg.com/news7009.html

 

[ramonmercado]

Quake Prediction Gets Shake-Up

Prediction Gets Shake-Up
By Stephen Leahy
Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0, ... 82,00.html

02:00 AM Oct. 06, 2005 PT

Researchers in Sweden claim to have developed a new computer model for predicting earthquakes that correctly -- retroactively -- forecast the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami that killed 275,000 people.

Using five years of seismological data from the region including records of 624 quakes, researchers from the Swedish Defense Research Agency, or FOI, studied the enormous stress created by the Indian Plate as it grinds into the Australasian Plate near the island of Sumatra.

They were particularly interested in the relative frequency of major and minor quakes, what seismologists call the b-value.

The lower the b-value, the greater the increase in tension in the Earth's crust, which entails a greater risk of major quakes. While this has been known for decades, the FOI model uses the information in a new way to plot the b-value ratios in time and space.

"We found that all of the major tremors were clearly visible in a time perspective. The b-value dropped drastically before the big quakes," said FOI researcher Leif Persson in a statement.

And the biggest drop-off was four months prior to the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake that measured 9.0 on the Richter scale.

The researchers said the model also accurately plotted the location of the quake's epicenter. And it worked for another more recent quake this year off the coast of Sumatra.

"Using this method, major quakes like the one that caused the tsunami could be predicted better, both in terms of time and geographic area," he said.

The model was originally developed to predict tremors following blasting operations in Swedish mines.

"This could be a very simple warning tool that would be much less expensive than the multimillion-dollar Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System that's being built," Persson added.

However, Ota Kulhánek, a seismologist at Sweden's Uppsala University who helped develop the model, said it's one thing to interpret the data retrospectively but very difficult to predict future events.

"Earthquakes are extremely complex events. I would not dare use our technique alone to make forecasts," he said.

Kulhánek said the new model would have to be used in combination with other techniques and data.

Indeed, seismologists are divided on whether earthquake predictions or forecasts are even possible.

Methods that accurately predict quakes after the fact have nearly always failed to predict future quakes, said seismologist Jim Dewey of the Earthquake Hazards Program at the U.S. Geological Survey.

And those that appear to work once or twice -- like one developed by UCLA's Vladmir Keilis Borok -- fail on their next big prediction.

Dewey summarized decades of effort to predict quakes as "periods of optimism followed by disillusionment."

But earthquake satellites may soon change that.

Earthquake forecasting has long been hobbled by its lack of data. While it may always be difficult to know what's happening 15 miles deep in the Earth's crust, new satellites with interferometric synthetic aperture radar, or InSAR, will illuminate the stresses in the Earth's surface, said John Rundle, director of the Center for Computational Science and Engineering at the University of California, Davis.

InSAR uses low-angle radar images of a landscape to determine changes in the surface over very broad regions to within a couple of inches. It can detect slight deformations in the Earth's crust, which may indicate strain prior to an earthquake.

In 10 years, such satellites could form a Global Earthquake Satellite System that will be a "major leap forward in earthquake forecasting," said Rundle.

Even without InSAR, Rundle's computational analysis of magnitude 3 or 4 quakes has accurately located earthquake hot spots in California. Although he doesn't use b-values, nearly all quakes in California in the past 10 years have been in his designated hot spots, he said.

"Earthquake forecasting is where weather forecasting was a few decades ago," he said.

Weather is no less chaotic or complex than earthquakes, and accurate weather forecasts have become routine, he added.

With InSAR-equipped satellites and better computer models combining a variety of analytical methods, "earthquake forecasting is definitely possible," said Rundle.

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

The Pakistan earthquake

They were saying that a large percentage of Muzaffarabad has died - pos. 30,000 just in that one city.

Map:
www.guardian.co.uk/graphic/0,5812,1588743,00.html

Earthquake death toll rises to 30,000

Randeep Ramesh in Rawalakot
Monday October 10, 2005
The Guardian

More than 30,000 people were killed by this weekend's powerful earthquake centred below the Hindu Kush mountain range in Pakistan, sending shockwaves across south Asia and reducing cities and villages to rubble.

The majority of the deaths from the quake, which measured 7.7 on the Richter scale and struck early Saturday morning, were in Pakistan. One state minister estimated that 30,000 people were killed in Pakistani Kashmir alone. In Indian Kashmir more than 600 were reported dead. At least 50,000 were believed to be injured. The UN estimated that more than 2.5 million people needed shelter.

Villagers were working through the night, often with their bare hands, to clear the rubble of collapsed buildings as they struggled to save the victims of the disaster. Rescue teams were scrambling last night to reach remote parts of the region.

Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf, flew over the region to see for himself the extent of the devastation, touring the country's mountainous border, which is now cut off from the rest of the country.

He was reported to have been shocked at the levelling of Balakot a town in North-West Frontier Province, where 70% of homes have been destroyed. The president appealed for international help, especially for tents, medicines and blankets, in what he said was the "biggest tragedy" in his country's 58-year history.

George Bush, who counts the Pakistani president as a key ally in the US-led war against terrorism, said assistance would be provided as needed. "My thoughts and prayers are with those affected by this horrible tragedy," he said in a statement.

The Queen expressed her heartfelt sympathy and Tony Blair pledged UK assistance.

The quake flattened dozens of villages. It killed farmers, students, soldiers and schoolchildren, and triggered landslides that blocked rescuers from many areas where bodies lay in streets.

Six US army helicopters are expected to arrive today to airlift the injured from the worst-hit city, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir, Muzaffarabad, where 11,000 people died. The city's cricket stadium was being used to house the homeless and offer relief to the survivors.

There was also widespread destruction in Rawalakot, Bagh and the numerous hill settlements throughout Pakistani Kashmir. Officials said to rebuild all the roads and buildings in the country would need hundreds of millions of dollars of aid. The World Bank immediately pledged £11.3m for reconstruction.

The quake and its aftershocks were felt from central Afghanistan to western Bangladesh. Buildings were wrecked in an area spanning at least 250 miles from Jalalabad in Afghanistan to Srinagar in Indian Kashmir.

Many survivors were left without shelter in near-freezing nighttime temperatures. In India's portion of Kashmir, villagers burned wood from their collapsed homes for warmth.

The tragedy sparked a bout of earthquake diplomacy, with Indian and Pakistani leaders pledging to work together across the line of control which divides the territory.

The "peace bridge", opened earlier this year, to ferry divided families across the de facto border was badly damaged and officials in both countries said its repair would be a priority.

In the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, faint voices, deep within a 12-metre mound of concrete that was a 10-storey building until Saturday, alerted rescuers to two survivors - a boy and a woman. There were believed to be dozens of bodies beneath the rubble.

There were warnings from relief agencies that children could make up half the population of the quake-affected areas and would be vulnerable to hunger, cold, illness and trauma. On the roads into the foothills of the Himalayas from Islamabad displaced villagers had gathered for shelter.

"We lost everything we had in just one minute. My shop is done. My house is gone and now we have to wait here without anything," said Mohammed Habib, who was with his five children, sitting on a road above the Jhelum river.

The Guardian was the first western news organisation to reach Rawalakot, a normally bustling market town in Pakistani Kashmir, 87 miles from Islam. It is also home to a brigade of the Pakistani army. Perched in the the western Himalayas, the town's university, law courts and shopping market had collapsed, encasing hundreds of bodies in tombs of brick, wood and concrete.

Locals said there was no electricity to give them light, no running water for bathing and cooking, no working landlines on which to phone family and friends or get out the word about the rapidly deteriorating conditions.

"We are completely cut off and there is no help. No agencies. No government. No doctors. We have been left to fend for ourselves and we need help," said Aziz Khan, a resident of a nearby village, who came to Rawalakot to look for a family friend.

"In our village 300 buildings have been damaged so badly that nobody wants to stay in them."

Rawalakot's civil military hospital crumpled seconds after the quake struck, crushing patients and depriving the local area of its primary medical centre at the moment when thousands would be in need of surgery and emergency care.

The site was sealed off by troops yesterday who refused to answer questions about the whereabouts of recovered bodies.

In the university, former students were pulling corpses from the wreckage but were angry with authorities, who they perceived to be tardy in responding to the devastation. The army had just arrived and a helicopter was unloading supplies in the afternoon for a relief operation.

"Although it was Saturday the classes were going on so there could be hundreds in there," said Muhammad Alam, 18, an engineering student at the university. "The thing is without the right equipment we will never get them out."

www.guardian.co.uk/pakistan/Story/0,276 ... 81,00.html

---
How you can help:

www.guardian.co.uk/pakistan/Story/0,276 ... 65,00.html

I saw a report on Islamic Relief:

www.islamic-relief.com

which has all the contacts out there used by larger aid agencies so helping them might be more direct. Send money not clothes(they sort the clothes and sell them to raise money so it slows the effort down a tad - although if you have clothes to give.....).

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

This could make things... interesting:

Car culture heightens earthquake danger in California: scientists


As California recalls the catastrophic earthquake that struck San Francisco 100 years ago, seismologists warn that the golden state's love of cars could turn into a fatal attraction in the quake-prone state.

Elevated freeways, highway overpasses, and garages built under homes are vulnerable to crashing down when the earth shudders, said seismologist Jack Boatwright of the US Geological Survey.

"The automobile culture is really a knife in the heart of earthquake preparedness," Boatwright told AFP. "We are only as strong as our weakest overpass."

Another key weakness is structural, including building code oversights exposed by the deadly Northridge earthquake that struck in the Los Angeles area in 1994, scientists said.

San Francisco is preparing to commemorate the major earthquake that laid ruin to the city 100 years ago on April 18.

Despite that history, significant building code reforms weren't instituted in the state until the 1970s.

While brick buildings and other risky structures have been bolstered, emergency officials concede much of the city would likely crumble in a temblor on par with the 7.8-magnitude earthquake of 1906.

Scores of small earthquakes are logged daily in California. Earthquakes have been embraced as part of the state's identity, with sports teams named after them and jokes made in films and commercials.

A "great strike" earthquake such as the one in 1906 relieves stress built up by jammed tectonic plates, reducing the odds of another temblor at the same spot.

"I don't think we quite have it nailed down, but it would appear the recurrence time for the 1906 event is 200 years," Boatwright said. "So, it looks like we are safe for a while from a recurrence. I'm pretty happy about that fact."

While the chances of another 1906-type quake along the San Andreas Fault in the next 30 years is one in twenty, there are a plethora of other faultlines overdue for trouble.

Rampant development has resulted in cities and communities built on top of faultlines, meaning they would be hit with the full force of shock waves released by earthquakes, according to scientists.

"We are better off than the people were in the Bay Area at the turn of the (20th) century," Boatwright said. "But, there is plenty of risk spread around for smaller events in inhabited areas."

The 1906 earthquake was centered off the coast of San Francisco. Another deadly quake that struck in 1989 was centered in the Santa Cruz Mountains south of San Francisco.

The Hayward Fault that runs under cities a short distance inland from San Francisco is a "poster child" for seismic hazard because it is due for a major earthquake.

"It will be an enormous mess where the earthquake occurs," Boatwright said. "It's horrifying to think that along faultlines where there used to be farmland you now have Silicon Valley filled with towns."

---------
© 2006 AFP

www.physorg.com/news63821413.html

 

[Rubyait]

San Francisco faces big shaker

Another magnitude 7.9 earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area would probably produce much stronger shaking than the catastrophic 1906 event of the same size.

The wider region should also expect thousands of fatalities and economic losses in the billions.

These conclusions are contained in two reports released to coincide with the 18 April centennial of the great quake that destroyed the city and killed 3,000 people.

The studies will be discussed at a special conference this week.

Scientists say the next big quake - a magnitude 6.7 or larger - will likely come within 30 years.

The first study, When the Big One Strikes Again, was commissioned by conference organisers and provides an estimate range of the death and damage toll for Northern California if an earthquake similar to 1906 hit the region today.

The other study, produced by the US Geological Survey (USGS), shows how shaking intensity would change if the San Andreas Fault were to rupture in a different place to 1906.

USGS scientists believe they have been able to reproduce the ground motion that occurred 100 years ago fairly accurately, making it a useful model to estimate the damage caused by the next big quake.

"These studies allow us to model the shaking and fill in the big gap in the data," said Dr Greg Beroza, a geophysicist at Stanford University who helped create the USGS simulation. "We can apply the results to other large earthquakes."

Time differences

The conference-commissioned report was prepared by Charles Kircher, a private engineering consultant.

One of its shaking scenarios suggests that out of the 10 million residents in 19 counties, a 7.9 earthquake could kill 1,800 and seriously injure 8,000 if it hit at night; and kill 3,400 and seriously injure 13,000 if it hit during the day.

Total economic losses could reach more than $120bn.

"Daytime casualties are typically higher than night-time, when people are in homes that are less susceptible to collapse than commercial buildings," said Dr Kircher.

However, the proportion of night-time deaths is raised slightly in San Francisco itself, where older homes are more vulnerable to collapse. Roughly one quarter - 800 - daytime deaths and almost a third of night-time deaths- 574 - would be in SF city districts.

The estimates are based on death by building collapse by shaking alone; not by fire, which could raise the death toll. Of the city's 400,000 residents in 1906, it is estimated that 3,000 died from both building collapse and the conflagration that swept the city immediately afterwards.

While it was unlikely a fire that size would rage again, smaller fires were very possible, said Dr Kircher.

"We expect fires to contribute significantly to the total loss," he added.

Adding in the cost of damage due to fire and lifeline infrastructure - such as highways - could raise the economic bill to $150bn. And this does not include long-term economic impact, the sort experienced in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

The total is 10 times the loss from the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, a 6.7 tremor on the San Andreas Fault centred in a mountainous region 100km (60 miles) to the south of San Francisco.

Steady improvement

Dr Kircher's study estimated loss to the area by using two 7.9 shaking scenarios that produced two sets of figures.


Click here to see a summary of the loss estimates
One set, expressed by the Modified Mercalli Intensity (MMI) scale, is based on a re-evaluation of the actual ground shaking in the 1906 earthquake. (However, scientists do not expect the ground to shake exactly like it did in 1906.)

The second set, referred to as M7.9, is based on a standard model of energy propagation from an earthquake occurring on the segments of the fault that ruptured in 1906; a sort of generic 7.9 quake.

Death and damage estimates are lower in the MMI model than in the M7.9; 800 night-time and 1,600 daytime deaths for the region, and $90bn dollars in economic loss.

While the population has increased 10 fold since 1906, when less than a million people called the greater San Francisco Bay area home, the number of fatalities does not increase proportionally in the recent estimates.

"Our knowledge of earthquakes and how they affect buildings have advanced quite a bit and our seismic codes have been advancing," said Dr Beroza, "but we're still talking about thousands of deaths. Will the public say that's acceptable?"

Dr Kircher said that an important finding of the study was that vulnerable buildings - un-reinforced masonry, older reinforced concrete and "soft-storey" - made up less than 5% of all buildings in the region but would kill more than half the people.

"Fixing those buildings would cut our casualties in half," said Dr Kircher.

Moveable epicentre

The second USGS study to be presented to the conference offers scientists a re-creation of the 1906 shaking, and a how it might change if the fault ruptured other than where it did, 2km off the coast of San Francisco.

The computer model draws on a new and highly detailed 3D geologic model of the Bay Area.

While scientists do not know when the next big quake will come or where it will originate, they do say that a 7.9 quake is unlikely to mirror 1906.

"There is no guarantee that the next big one will begin exactly where the last big one began," said Dr Beroza. "It will be different and may not start in the same place."

In the USGS simulations, a rupture at the northern end of the San Andreas Fault, with the same amount of slip, creates the same or greater shaking for San Francisco as it did in 1906; while an epicentre at the southern end of the northern portion of the fault, near San Juan Batista, creates considerably stronger shaking for the city.

This is due to variations in local geology and the fact that the energy from the rupture and seismic waves increase as they propagate toward the city.

"Things could be worse for San Francisco itself with a rupture that begins south of the city, than it was in 1906 when the rupture began very close to it," said Brad Aagaard, a USGS research geophysicist who ran the simulations.

This, ironically, makes the original 1906 quake, with its epicentre near the city, a best-case scenario for San Francisco if a 7.9 earthquake were to hit again.

But increased shaking in one area means less shaking somewhere else. Moving the epicentre to San Juan Batista produces more intense shaking for San Francisco, but milder shaking in the Silicon Valley region.

"The bottom line is that the next large event on the San Andreas Fault will differ in some ways from the 1906 earthquake," said Dr Aagaard. "We need to consider many scenarios in order to be prepared for such an event."

The 100th Anniversary Earthquake Conference continues through to 21 April in San Francisco.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4916870.stm

 

[waitew]

Earthquake 'hotspots' in California are pretty ease really.The imperial valley (especailly the spreading center at the southern shore of the salton sea) is constantly active,The san jacinto fault is constantly active,the aftershock zone of the Landers/Bigbear & Hector mine earthquakes are constantly active,The coso volcanic field is constantly active,the aftershock zone of the San simeon earthquake is usually active,there is an east/west zone in the southern sierra nevada where a new fault is forming north of the Garlock fault that is constantly active,A north/south trending zone just south of the Long valley caldera (probably magma injection) that is constantly active,adobe valley is usually active,The geysers north of San Fransico are constantly active (But it's man made due to Geothermal extraction..doesn't count in my book!)The Mendocino triple junction/ridge are usually active....those are the 'Hot spots' the 'great valley' & the sierra nevada proper,the casecades & the deserts east the the eastern california shear zone are basically ( day to day) earthquake free!

 

[rynner2]

Next great California quake is building up, say experts
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
(Filed: 22/06/2006)

A century after a great earthquake killed thousands and made 300,000 homeless in San Francisco, a study of local geology shows that another is due in California.

Today, a researcher investigating the stress building up at the San Andreas Fault using satellite data concludes that there is now sufficient energy for the next "big one" - an earthquake of magnitude seven or greater at the southern end of the fault, near Los Angeles and San Diego.

The likelihood of a large earthquake may be increasing faster than researchers had believed, according to the study, led by Dr Yuri Fialko, of Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, and published today in Nature.

Although seismologists are not able to predict when a great earthquake will occur, most believe it is inevitable. Dr Fialko said his data suggested that "the fault is ready for the next big earthquake but exactly…when it will occur we cannot tell. It could be tomorrow or it could be 10 years or more from now."

The Earth's surface is divided into several large tectonic plates separated by fault zones. The 800-mile San Andreas Fault divides the slow but steady movement of the North American plate, which moves south-easterly relative to the neighbouring Pacific plate. When plates slide past each other, which seismologists call "creep", strain accumulates less than when plates "lock" and stress loads continue to escalate, increasing the prospects of an eventual fault rupture and earthquake.

But Dr Fialko found evidence that the southern San Andreas is mostly locked and continues to accumulate significant strain. He calculated the rate at which the fault is moving and estimated the "fault slip rate", the pace of the plate movement at the fault, at about an inch per year.

During the last 300 dormant years the fault has accumulated approximately six to eight metres of slip "deficit". If released all at once, it would result in a magnitude eight earthquake, roughly the size of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, he said. "We can say with some certainty that the fault is approaching the end of its loading period."

The study also showed that the San Jacinto Fault, a lesser known branch fault that runs through populated areas in San Bernardino, Riverside and Borrego Springs is moving at twice the speed of previous estimates and is even more at risk of earthquake, probably at magnitude seven

http://tinyurl.com/zbyg3

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

This is more apocalyptic in tone:

Southern San Andreas fault waiting to explode: report

Wed Jun 21, 2006 1:31pm ET13


By Jeremy Lovell

LONDON (Reuters) - The southern end of the San Andreas fault near Los Angeles, which has been still for more than two centuries, is under immense stress and could produce a massive earthquake at any moment, a scientist said on Wednesday.

Yuri Fialko, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at La Jolla, California, said that given average annual movement rates in other areas of the fault, there could be enough pent-up energy in the southern end to trigger a cataclysmic jolt of up to 10 meters (32 ft).

"The observed strain rates confirm that the southern section of the San Andreas fault may be approaching the end of the interseismic phase of the earthquake cycle," he wrote in the science journal Nature.

A sudden lateral movement of 7 to 10 meters would be among the largest ever recorded.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the earthquake that destroyed San Francisco in 1906 was produced by a sudden movement of the northern end of the fault of up to 21 ft.

Fialko said there had been no recorded movement at the southern end of the fault -- the 800-mile long geological meeting point of the Pacific and the North American tectonic plates -- since the dawn of European settlement in the area.

He said this lack of movement for 250 years correlated with the predicted gaps between major earthquakes at the southern end of the fault of between 200 and 300 years.

Elsewhere on the fault, there were average slippage rates up to a couple of centimeters a year that prevented the build-up of explosive pressure deep underground.

When these became blocked and then suddenly broke free they produced tremors or earthquakes of varying intensity depending on the movement that had taken place before and the duration of the blockage.

USGS says the most recent major earthquakes in the northern and central zones of the San Andreas fault were in 1857 and 1906.

Fialko said there were three possible explanations for the lack of observed movement in the southern section -- creepage under the surface that had no external manifestation, that it simply might not move as much as the rest or a major blockage.

"Except for the first possibility above, the continued quiescence increases the likelihood of a future event," he wrote.

Making calculations based on a wide range of land and satellite observations, he discounted the idea of creepage and warned of impending disaster.

"Regardless of fault geometry and mechanical properties of the ambient crust, results presented in this study lend support to intermediate-term forecasts of a high probability of major earthquakes on the southern SAF system," Fialko said.

Source

 

[Rubyait]

Two earthquakes rock Sumatran coast

Two strong earthquakes shook the west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra on Tuesday, killing at least 70 people and flattening buildings. The tremors were felt as far away as Malaysia and Singapore, where several buildings were evacuated.

Scores of people are believed to be trapped under rubble on Sumatra, prompting the government to send in the military to help with rescue efforts.

The first quake, of magnitude 6.3, was felt in the West Sumatra provincial capital of Padang at 1050 local time (0350 GMT) and sparked panic among seaside residents who feared it might trigger a tsunami. According to the US Geological Survey, the earthquake's epicentre was 50 kilometres north of Padang.

The quake was also felt across the city-state of Singapore, where tall buildings in the business district swayed slightly, and in areas on the western coast of Malaysia. View a map of where the 0350 GMT earthquake was felt.

A further 6.1-magnitude earthquake struck the same area at 1259 local time (0549 GMT). Both of the tremors occurred on land, virtually eliminating the chance of a tsunami.

Traffic jams
Hospitals in some areas were overwhelmed with dozens of injured. Government officials began to rush aid to affected people, but a key road into Padang was badly damaged by the quake, hampering aid distribution.

"I cannot predict how many people are still trapped because the process is still on. However, there are many houses collapsed, and I believe that the inhabitants are in them," said Syamsu Rahim, the mayor of nearby Solok town.

"Many people have calmed down and are returning home, but we can still see some traffic jams around the city," says the mayor of Padang, Fauzi Bahar.

Warning system
Local resident Asmiarti, whose home is on the northern Padang shore, said: "It was really strong. I panicked, I ran out of the house just like the other neighbours. When we got out, our bodies were still shaking and the trees were also shaking. We fear there would be a tsunami but there has been no announcement so far," she says.

Padang is one of the few Indonesian cities where a tsunami warning system is in place. A quake in the Indian Ocean off Sumatra island in December 2004 caused a tsunami that left about 170,000 people dead or missing in Indonesia's northern Aceh province.

Earthquakes are frequent in Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous country. Its 17,000 islands sprawl along a belt of intense volcanic and seismic activity. The ocean floor is being driven northwards below Sumatra, in a process called subduction. As the slab descends beneath its neighbouring plate, earthquakes are triggered.

http://environment.newscientist.com/art ... coast.html

 

[Bigphoot2]

Unusual earthquakes measured off Oregon By JEFF BARNARD, Associated Press Writer
Sat Apr 12, 5:06 PM ET



Scientists listening to underwater microphones have detected an unusual swarm of earthquakes off central Oregon, something that often happens before a volcanic eruption — except there are no volcanoes in the area.

Scientists don't know exactly what the earthquakes mean, but they could be the result of molten rock rumbling away from the recognized earthquake faults off Oregon, said Robert Dziak, a geophysicist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Oregon State University.

There have been more than 600 quakes over the past 10 days in a basin 150 miles southwest of Newport. The biggest was magnitude 5.4, and two others were more than magnitude 5.0, OSU reported.

On the hydrophones, the quakes sound like low thunder and are unlike anything scientists have heard in 17 years of listening, Dziak said. Some of the quakes have also been detected by earthquake instruments on land.

The hydrophones are left over from a network the Navy used to listen for submarines during the Cold War. They routinely detect passing ships, earthquakes on the ocean bottom and whales calling to one another.

Scientists hope to send out an OSU research ship to take water samples, looking for evidence that sediment has been stirred up and chemicals that would indicate magma is moving up through the Juan de Fuca Plate, Dziak said.

The quakes have not followed the typical pattern of a major shock followed by a series of diminishing aftershocks, and few have been strong enough to be felt on shore.

The Earth's crust is made up of plates that rest on molten rock, which are rubbing together. When the molten rock, or magma, erupts through the crust, it creates volcanoes.

That can happen in the middle of a plate. When the plates lurch against each other, they create earthquakes along the edges.

In this case, the Juan de Fuca Plate is a small piece of crust being crushed between the Pacific Plate and North America, Dziak said.




http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080412/ap_ ... uake_swarm

 

[rynner2]

Quake moves NZ towards Australia

A massive earthquake last week has brought New Zealand closer to Australia, scientists say.

The 7.8 magnitude quake in the Tasman Sea has expanded New Zealand's South Island westwards by about 30cm (12in).

Seismologist Ken Gledhill, of GNS Science, said the shift demonstrated the huge force of the tremor.

But correspondents say that with more than 2,250km (1,400 miles) separating the countries, the narrowing will not exactly be visible.

Nor, as the New Zealand media have observed, is it likely to bring cheaper air fares.

The quake was powerful enough to generate a small tsunami with a wave of one metre (3ft) recorded on the west coast of New Zealand.

People in coastal areas were for a time advised to move to higher ground.

While the south-west of the South Island moved about 30cm towards Australia, the east coast moved only one centimetre westwards, Dr Gledhill said.

"Basically, New Zealand just got a little bit bigger is another way to think about it," he told AFP news agency.

Although it was New Zealand's biggest earthquake in 78 years, it caused only slight damage to buildings and property when it struck in the remote Fiordland region west of Invercargill last Thursday.

"For a very large earthquake, although it was very widely felt, there were very few areas that were severely shaken," Dr Gledhill said.

GNS Science is a research organisation run by the New Zealand government.

New Zealand frequently suffers earthquakes because it sits on the meeting point of the Australian and Pacific continental plates.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-p ... 162628.stm

 

[ruffready]

As I sit here with my dog and looking for WEIRD STUFF (I'm in a need for weird stuff mood) I just heard there was a wooper of an earth quake in the indian ocean and one near Japan also.

The tsunamie warnings are going out as I type :shock: