Earth Changes
The slightly increased number of quakes is concentrated on the volcano-tectonic Kameni line, which stretches SW-NE through the caldera and extends outside, especially to the NE where the submarine volcano Kolumbo is located 8 km off the coast. The alignment defines a tectonic graben structure underlying Santorini and has been used for rising magma for nearly all past eruptions of the volcano.
He was reported as saying by the local media that Mt Ijen was showing the most activity and that people living in its vicinity had been warned not to come within a 1.5 kilometer radius of the mountain. Besides the above three, five other volcanoes - Mt Gamalama (Ternate Island, Moluccas), Mt Papandayan (Garut, West Java), Gunung Karangetang (northern Sulawesi ), Gunung Lokon (northern Sulawesi) and Anak Krakatau (Sunda Strait) - were also reported to have started "rumbling."
Four remained missing and 22 were being treated in hospital.
Provincial premier, Zweli Mkhize, on a visit to families left destitute, said he was worried that bodies were being found that did not match the identities of people reported missing.
"That means we have a challenge in estimating the numbers of people that have died," he said on air.

Hidden menace: Laacher See looks tranquil, but beneath its waters lies a volcano that could devastate Europe.
It's lurking just 390 miles away underneath the tranquil Laacher See lake near Bonn and is capable of ejecting billions of tons of magma.
This monster erupts every 10 to 12,000 years and last went off 12,900 years ago, so it could blow at any time.

MYSTERY: How, or why, tens of tons of dead herring suddenly fills the beach on the resin, no one has a definite answer. Here, Jan-Petter Jorgensen dog Molly on inspection New Year's Eve (Google translated).
However, various theories have been tossed around, explains Jan-Petter Jorgensen (44), who stumbled upon the mass death in sight on the beach with his dog Molly. People say that something similar happened in the 80′s, and there is speculation among others on the river which flows into the ocean behind a promontory on the site, may have had something to do with it. Maybe the fish have been caught in a deprived oxygen environment, and then died of fresh water? Jorgensen estimates each individual fish to be of 100-150 grams, and that the total might be about up to 20 tons. Now he's worried about what might happen if no one comes and removing carcasses.
Source: Dagbladet (translated)

Nearby: Officials are saying that the 10 earthquakes in Ohio this year- including Saturday's 4.0 one- are likely caused by drilling for oil and gas
The tremor sent some stunned residents running for cover as bookshelves shook and pictures and lamps fell from tables.
The quake struck Saturday afternoon in McDonald, outside of Youngstown, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
Area residents said a loud boom accompanied the shaking, but sheriff's dispatchers from several counties in the area said there were no immediate reports of damage.
A few miles from the epicenter, Charles Kihm said he was preparing food in his kitchen when he heard a noise and thought a vehicle had hit his Austintown home.
'It really shook, and it rumbled, like there was a sound,' said Mr Kihm, 82.
'It was loud. It didn't last long. But it really scared me.'
More than 50 persons were evacuated from their homes when a large landslide ripped through a rural area outside Trondheim on Sunday. It was a brutal start to the New Year, following a string of storms that also forced evacuations in western Norway earlier in the week.
Geologists said it was too early to determine exactly what caused the landslide at Byneset in Trøndelag, which extended over around half-a-kilometer of farmland. One geologist told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) that the ground in the area was characterized by unstable clay and that the stormy weather of the past week may have contributed to the landslide.
Catastrophe alarm
It set off full catastrophe alarms Sunday morning but by the end of the day, no homes had been destroyed and no lives lost. The evacuations were made because of the unstable groundmass.
"We're not at all certain that the slide is over," Kari Øvrelid of the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE) told NRK. "We need to keep monitoring this."
She said the danger of more landslides had been reduced, but 22 persons remained under evacuation orders Sunday night. Police, civil defense personnel, geologists and local government officials were using special equipment to monitor ground movement in the darkness. There were also concerns that the huge volumes of earth would clog local creeks and set off flooding.
The brine wastewater comes from drilling operations that use the so-called fracking process to extract gas from underground shale. But Ohio Department of Natural Resources Director Jim Zehringer said during a news teleconference that fracking is not causing the quakes.
"The seismic events are not a direct result of fracking," he said.
Environmentalists and property owners who live near gas drilling wells have questioned the safety of fracking to the environment and public health. Federal regulators have declared the technology safe, however.
The quake struck near the uninhabited island of Torishima in the Pacific Ocean, about 370 miles south of Tokyo, and its epicenter was about 230 miles below the sea, the Meterological Agency said. It did not generate a tsunami.
Buildings in the Tokyo area shook, but no damage or injuries were reported. Express trains in northern and central Japan were suspended temporarily for safety checks but later resumed.
No abnormalities were reported at power plants, including the crippled nuclear power plant in northeast Japan hit by the March earthquake and tsunami, public broadcaster NHK reported.

Hot or not: Hiroko Aki, a resident of Nagareyama, Chiba Prefecture, places a food sample in a radiation detector Oct. 11 at Bec-Miru, a DIY irradiation scanning store in nearby Kashiwa.
The tranquil residential city of 406,000 in Chiba Prefecture rarely enters the national spotlight, except when Kashiwa Reysol, the local soccer team, is playing at home.
But on a street just six minutes from JR Kashiwa Station, the Bec-Miru facility that Motohiro Takamatsu opened in October is turning heads by offering residents a chance to scan their own groceries, garden soil and other items for radiation.
"To have Kashiwa become contaminated with radiation, that was a big deal for me," the software engineer and accidental entrepreneur said in a recent interview with The Japan Times.
Takamatsu imported several LB 200 gamma spectroscopy machines from Germany to equip his new shop, which allows anyone to check items for contamination from the Fukushima nuclear crisis for a fee of ¥980 per 20 minutes.






