earthquakes

Turkish officials say an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.0 has destroyed homes in several villages in the country’s east, killing at least 41 people and injuring 50 others.

Turkey’s Kandilli Observatory says the quake struck the province of Elazig early Monday at 4:32 a.m. local time and was centered near the town of Karakocan. The quake toppled stone and mud-brick homes, along with the minarets of mosques in several villages.

Source/Full Story: English

In the last two weeks, more than 100 mostly tiny earthquakes a day, on average, have rattled a remote area of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, putting scientists who monitor the park’s strange and volatile geology on alert.

Researchers say that for now, the earthquake cluster, or swarm — the second-largest ever recorded in the park — is more a cause for curiosity than alarm. The quake zone, about 10 miles northwest of the Old Faithful geyser, has shown little indication, they said, of building toward a larger event, like a volcanic eruption of the type that last ravaged the Yellowstone region tens of thousands of years ago.

The area is far from any road or community, and the park is relatively empty in winter. Swarms of small quakes, including a significant swarm last year, are relatively common.

But at a time when the disastrous earthquake in Haiti on Jan. 12 has refocused global attention on the earth’s immense store of tectonic energy, scientists say that the Yellowstone swarm, if only because of its volume, bears close observation: as of Sunday, there had been 1,608 quakes since Jan. 17.

“We’re not seeing a pattern that is really discernible yet,” said Henry Heasler, a coordinating scientist for the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, a joint venture of Yellowstone, the United States Geological Survey and the University of Utah. Dr. Heasler said plans were in place to intensify observations in case the swarm continued for a long time or got larger. “We’re ready to ramp up,” he said, including using flights to monitor the area.

Researchers at the University of Utah’s Seismograph Stations who have tracked Yellowstone swarms said they thought it was coincidental that another big swarm of more 1,000 quakes had struck the park just over a year ago. At the time, it was the second-biggest cluster recorded there. The largest swarm was in 1985, when 3,000 earthquakes struck over three months.

Source/Full Story: NYTimes.com

A strong earthquake struck Haiti on Wednesday morning, shaking buildings and sending screaming people running into the streets only eight days after the country’s capital was devastated by a previous quake.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the 6.1 magnitude quake hit at 6:03 a.m. (1103 GMT) about 35 miles (56 kilometers) northwest of the capital of Port-au-Prince. It struck at a depth of 13.7 miles (22 kilometers) but was located too far inland to generate any tidal waves in the Caribbean.

Wails of terror rose Wednesday from frightened survivors of the apocalyptic quake that struck eight days ago as people as people poured out of unstable buildings.

It was not immediately possible to ascertain what additional damage the new quake may have caused.

Source/Full Story: Yahoo! News

Something to consider…

Aid workers hoping to distribute food, water and other supplies to a shattered Port-au-Prince are warning their efforts may need more security Friday as Haitians grow increasingly desperate and impatient for help.

United Nations peacekeepers patrolling the capital said people’s anger is rising that aid hasn’t been distributed quickly, and the Brazilian military warned aid convoys to add security to guard against looting.

SLIDESHOW: Devastation in Haiti (Warning: Graphic)

“Unfortunately, they’re slowly getting more angry and impatient,” said David Wimhurst, spokesman for the Brazilian-commanded U.N. peacekeeping mission. “I fear, we’re all aware that the situation is getting more tense as the poorest people who need so much are waiting for deliveries. I think tempers might be frayed.”

Source/Full Story: FOXNews.com

A fierce earthquake struck Haiti late Tuesday afternoon, causing a crowded hospital to collapse, leveling countless shantytown dwellings and bringing even more suffering to a nation that was already the hemisphere’s poorest and most disaster-prone.

The earthquake, the worst in the region in more than 200 years, left the country in a shambles. As night fell in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, fires burned near the shoreline downtown, but otherwise the city fell into darkness. The electricity was out, telephones were not working and relief workers struggled to make their way through streets blocked by rubble.

In the chaos, it was not possible for officials to determine how many people had been killed and injured, but they warned that the casualties could be substantial.

Source/Full Story: NYTimes.com

Residents are cleaning up the damage caused by a 6.5-magnitude quake that struck Saturday off the coast of Eureka, California.

At the height of quake-related outages, nearly 28,000 customers, most of them in Humboldt County, were without power, said David Eisenhower, spokesman for Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

As of 11:30 p.m. (2:30 a.m. ET), power had been restored to 22,000 customers. The rest are expected to have power restored by early Sunday.

The northern California quake, which ran about 13.5 miles deep, hit offshore at 4:27 p.m. (7:27 p.m. ET) about 33 miles from the coastal city of Eureka, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Nearly a dozen aftershocks followed, the strongest at 4.5 magnitude. There was no tsunami warning issued.

Source/Full Story: CNN.com

A moderate strength earthquake rattled both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border on Wednesday, breaking windows and scaring residents but there were no immediate reports of injuries.

The 5.8-magnitude quake, which struck near the Mexican border city of Mexicali, was felt widely in the San Diego and Tijuana areas.

Buildings were evacuated on both sides of the border and several small aftershocks were felt after the initial temblor.

Mexicali, east of the city of Tijuana, is home to a number of factories that assemble goods for export to the United States.

The U.S. Geological Survey originally measured the quake as a 5.9 magnitude but later downgraded the size.

Source/Full Story: Reuters

Source: Reuters

Southern Californians simultaneously dropped to the floor and huddled under tables and desks for two minutes of imagined seismic turmoil on Thursday in the biggest U.S. earthquake drill.

The Great Southern California ShakeOut was organized by scientists and emergency officials as part of a campaign to prepare the state’s 22 million inhabitants for a catastrophic quake that experts say is inevitable and long overdue.

The drill is based on the premise of a magnitude 7.8 quake striking the southern portion of the famed San Andreas Fault, a subterranean chasm between two massive plates of the Earth’s crust that extends hundreds of miles (km) across the state.

The hypothetical quake, similar in strength to the devastating tremor that hit China in May, also is the basis for this year’s annual Golden Guardian exercise — a days-long disaster simulation for emergency-response agencies statewide.

“This helps us hone our skills,” said Patricia Aidem, a spokeswoman for Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in suburban Los Angeles, whose trauma center is taking part in the larger mass-casualty drill.

“We live in earthquake country, so being prepared to help the public is just an amazing advantage for the community.”

Teaching people quake survival skills also “means fewer patients for us,” she added.

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Technorati Tags: Great Southern California ShakeOut

Source: Hayward Fault Scenario Earthquakes

In 2008 the USGS led a collaborative effort with URS Corporation, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Stanford University, and the University of California at Berkeley to create computer simulations of large, anticipated earthquakes on the Hayward and Rodgers Creek faults. The most recent large earthquake on the Hayward fault was in 1868, 140 years ago. Because the past five large earthquakes on the Hayward fault have been about 140 years apart, the Hayward and Rodgers Creek faults are the most likely faults to produce a large earthquake in the Bay Area. These computer simulations of scenario (or anticipated) earthquakes provide detailed pictures of what shaking we should expect in such earthquakes. These computer models capture the shaking at length scales larger than about 300 ft (100 m), so they do not include the effects of very thin, soft sediments, such as Bay Mud around the perimeter of San Francisco Bay. For areas with these thin, soft sediments the shaking would be stronger than what is shown in the animations.

The computer simulations include a total of seven earthquake scenarios: three magnitude 6.8 scenarios with different starting locations (epicenters), three magnitude 7.0 scenarios with different starting locations, and one magnitude 7.2 scenario. The next large earthquake on the Hayward fault will likely fall in the range of magnitude 6.8-7.0. The magnitude 6.8 and magnitude 7.0 scenario earthquakes provide detailed examples of the type of shaking we should expect in such an event. The magnitude 7.2 scenario earthquake, while possible, is a much less likely event involving simultaneous rupture of both the Hayward and Rodgers Creek faults.

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earthquakes