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7.1 earthquake strikes near Vanuatu

May 10, 2011 Comments off

stuff

7.1-magnitude earthquake hits off Vanuatu

A strong 7.1 magnitude earthquake struck off the Pacific islands of Vanuatu and New Caledonia On Tuesday, the US Geological Survey said, but there were no immediate reports of damage and a local official said that a tsunami was not expected.

The quake’s epicentre was 136 km southwest of Isangel in Vanuatu and 147 km north-east of Tadine, in the Loyalty Islands, New Caledonia, the USGS said in a bulletin. The quake was 26 km deep.

“Based on all of the local analytical data, a tsunami is not expected within Vanuatu,” an official for the Vanuatu Meteorological Services told Reuters by telephone from the capital, Port Vila.

A receptionist at a hotel in Ouvea in the Loyalty Islands said there was no immediate sign of damage.

“It was not a particularly strong tremor but we definitely felt it. There was no breakage, no damage,” the receptionist at the Hotel Paradis d’Ouvea said.

A large contingent of New Zealand Defence Force personnel are on Espiritu Santo, near the earthquake’s epicentre.

The Navy’s multirole ship HMNZS Canterbury is in the region serving in the “Pacific Partnership” civil aid operation.

It has been at the port of Luganville with the amphibious transport dock ship USS Cleveland, the Australian heavy landing craft  HMAS Balikpapan and HMAS Betano.

New Zealand Army personnel are also with the mission.

There have been no reports of injury from the New Zealanders.

Categories: Earthquake, Pacific Ocean Tags: , , ,

Mitch Batross – Magnetic Pole Shift In Progress (VIDEO)

May 10, 2011 Comments off
Categories: Earth changes, Earthquake Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Earthquake deaths increasing worldwide – UN report

May 10, 2011 Comments off

tvnz

Earthquake deaths increasing worldwide - UN report (Source: ONE News)Charlotte Bellis took this photo in the Christchurch CBD shortly after the quake struck. – Source: ONE News


Fatalities from earthquakes are increasing worldwide but the chance of dying in a weather-related disaster is diminishing the United Nations said today.

The UN report also claimed economic losses from catastrophes are rising in all regions often due to a lack of investment

Damage to infrastructure – schools, health centres, roads, bridges – is soaring in many low- and middle-income countries despite improvements in many early warning systems, it said in the Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction.

Rich countries are also increasingly exposed, with damage on the rise following floods in Australia and earthquakes in Japan and New Zealand already this year, it said.

“Progress is mixed,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in the report.

“The recent events in Japan point to new and catastrophic risks that need to be anticipated,” he warned, referring to the earthquake and tsunami in northeast Japan last March that triggered the worst nuclear crisis in 25 years.

Disasters have already caused more than $300 billion in losses so far this year, roughly the same as in all of 2010, a UN Read more…

Categories: Earth changes, Earthquake Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Is this the age of megaquakes?

April 19, 2011 1 comment

msn

Kyodo / Reuters

Buildings tossed together by the tsunami is seen in Miyagi Prefecture, northeastern Japan March 12, 2011. Scientists are asking if another megaquake will strike in the next six years.

By John Roach

First there was the earthquake and tsunami in Sumatra in 2004. Chile was shaken and lashed violently a year ago. Japan is still reeling from the twin disasters on March 11. It seems as if the Earth has woken from a long slumber and is violently re-jiggering its plates. Is there any truth to the notion?

The question of megaquake clustering, which I explored in the days following the 9.0 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, was a hot topic of conversation Thursday at the Seismological Society of America’s annual meeting in Memphis, Tenn., according to various media reports.

There, Charles Bufe, a seismologist retired from the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver, said the spate of recent megaquakes is very similar to a string of seven magnitude 8.5 or greater quakes that struck between 1950 and 1965. The intervening decades, he noted, were quiet.

Bufe and USGS colleague David Perkins analyzed the clustering and concluded that Read more…

Categories: Earth, Earthquake Tags: , , , ,

March 9.0 Japanese quake set off tremors around the world

April 19, 2011 1 comment

ouramazingplanet

earthquake magnitude comparison

The earthquake that launched a series of disasters in Japan in March triggered micro-quakes and tremors around the world, scientists find.

The catastrophic magnitude 9.0 earthquake that struck off the coast of the Tohoku region of Japan March 11 set off tremors mostly in places of past seismic activity, including southwest Japan, Taiwan, the Aleutians and mainland Alaska, Vancouver Island in Canada, Washington state, Oregon, central California and the central United States. It was unlikely that any of these events exceeded magnitude 3.

Researchers noted, however, that temblors also were detected in Cuba. “Seismologists had never seen tremor in Cuba, so this is an exciting new observation,” Justin Rubinstein, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey at Menlo Park, Calif., told OurAmazingPlanet.

Part of the excitement of the find is the insight it could add into the inner workings of earthquakes.

“Studying long-range triggering may help us to better understand the underlying physics of how earthquakes start,” explained seismologist Zhigang Peng at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.

Quakes where normally quiet

Most of these micro-earthquakes and tremors occurred in places that already had high background levels of seismic activity, including California’s Geysers Geothermal Field and the San Andreas Fault. Some of the quakes occurred in low-activity areas, such as central Nebraska, central Arkansas and near Beijing.

“Seismologists generally think of the central U.S. as relatively Read more…

Categories: Earthquake, Japan, world Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Strain from Japan earthquake may lead to more seismic trouble, scientists say

April 11, 2011 Comments off

washingtonpost

Japan won’t stop shaking. One month after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, the nation rode out yet another powerful aftershock Monday, the second in four days. This one rattled buildings in Tokyo and briefly cut power to the damaged nuclear plant in Fukushima.

 

With soldiers still looking for the bodies of thousands of people who vanished in the killer wave a month ago, Japan is coping with the painful reality that it sits in a seismic bull’s-eye.

A new calculation by American and Japanese scientists has concluded that the March 11 event may have heightened the stress on faults bracketing the ruptured segment of the Japan Trench.

“There’s quite a bit of real estate on which stress has increased, by our calculations,” said U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist Ross Stein. “The possibility of getting large, Read more…

Categories: Earthquake, Japan Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

MAJOR EARTHQUAKE HITS JAPAN, BLACKOUTS IN SENDAI AND FUKUSHIMA

April 7, 2011 2 comments

businessinsider.com

Could there be a connection with the Solar Storm from yesterday?  Definitely.

quake A major earthquake between 7.1 and 7.4 magnitude hit northeastern Japan at 11:32 Tokyo time. It was focused 60 kilometers below the seabed off Miyagi Prefecture, which also got slammed last time.

The quake has caused scattered gas leaks and fires. A few dozen injuries have been reported.

U.S. markets turned down on the news and Nikkei futures have plunged.

Tsunami warnings were issued, but then lifted an hour after the quake.

Power is out around Sendai and in parts of Fukushima and Yamagata. Even as two of the three local plants are blacked out, however, cooling activities will continue at Fukushima nuclear plant. No new damage is reported at the Fukushima nuclear plant or others. Workers at the Fukushima plant were briefly evacuated.

NHK reports Rokkasho plutonium reprocessing plant has lost off site power and is on emergency backup.

Bullet trains have started running again less than an hour after the quake.  All highways are shut in Miyagi, local police tell Kyodo.

12:16 ET: Japanese officials say there is still a high risk of mud slides and collapsing buildings.

Here’s a video of the tremor in Sendai:   What could that strange blue light be??? Read more…

Categories: Earthquake, Japan Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Earthquake shakes wide area of southern Mexico

April 7, 2011 Comments off

google.com

Could there be a connection with the Solar Storm from yesterday?  Definitely.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — A magnitude-6.5 earthquake shook a wide area of southern and central Mexico on Thursday, sending people fleeing into the streets, but causing only minor reported damage.

The epicenter was located near Las Choapas, a town of about 83,000 residents about 370 miles (600 kilometers) southeast of Mexico City. It swayed buildings for several seconds in the capital, and in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz, people ran from their homes and school children assembled on playgrounds.

Near the epicenter, cracks in walls forced the evacuation of one elementary school, said Bernabe Hernandez Perez, head of civil protection in Las Choapas.

Gov. Javier Duarte de Ochoa said earlier that he had no reports of damage in the oil-producing state.

“Veracruz is completely quiet without problems,” he told state television. “It was felt all over the state, but nothing major happened. It was only a scare.”

The temblor also was felt strongly in the state of Chiapas, bordering Guatemala, where there also were no immediate reports of damage or injuries, as well as the Pacific coast state of Guerrero.

The U.S. Geological survey said the quake hit at a depth of 104 miles (167 kilometers).

Categories: Earthquake, Mexico Tags: , , , ,

USGS maps NOT REPORTING known significant earthquake data near New Madrid Fault

April 7, 2011 Comments off
Categories: Earthquake, United States Tags: , , , ,

Tsunami alert after Indonesia quake

April 3, 2011 Comments off

bigpondnews

A tsunami warning has been issued after a 6.7 magnitude quake struck off the Indonesian island of Java.

 

Indonesian seismologists issued a tsunami warning early Monday after an earthquake which they said had a magnitude of 7.1 struck in the Indian Ocean south of the island of Java.

Indonesia’s Meteorology and Geophysics Agency said that the quake was 10km deep with its epicentre 293km southwest of Cilacap in central Java.

The quake had the potential to cause a tsunami, it said, asking recipients of its public alert SMS to warn other people of the danger.

The US Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said that there was no risk of a widespread destructive wave, but there was a ‘very small possibility of a local tsunami’.

The US Geological Survey said the quake was 6.7, and it was located 277km south of Tasikmalaya in West Java and 241km east-north-east of Christmas Island.

There is no tsunami threat to the Australian mainland, islands or territories.

Categories: Earthquake, Indonesia Tags: , , , , ,