A magnitude 5.5 earthquake struck off the coast of the West Coast state of Washington on Sunday, the United States Geological Survey said. The earthquake was followed by a 4.5 magnitude aftershock. The depth was reported at 6.3 miles and the quake was located 190 miles west of Neah Bay, the USGS said. There was no immediate statement from the U.S. Pacific Tsunami Warning Center based in Hawaii on the quake. - Reuters

USGS Data

An earthquake registering magnitude 6.3 rocked a northern Indonesian island on Saturday as residents were ending their fast on the final day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, officials said. There were reports of at least two injuries but no tsunami warning was issued.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the late-afternoon quake struck 56 kilometers (35 miles) southeast of Palu city on Sulawesi Island at a depth of 19.9 kilometers (12.4 miles).

Sudirman, an officer at the Disaster Management Agency who uses one name, said there were reports from the province that at least two people were injured by falling debris and of damage to houses in Parigi Mountong, the district closest to the epicenter.

He said the full extent of the injuries and damage was not yet known.

The earthquake struck as people in the province were ending their fast on the last day of Ramadan, causing many to rush out into the streets in panic, local news reports said.

The USGS initially measured the quake at magnitude 6.6 but later adjusted it to 6.3.

A magnitude 7.7 earthquake in a sea off the coast of eastern Russia did not cause any reported damage or injuries.

But it did cause numerous "false positive" reports of earthquakes in California, a U.S. Geological Survey official said Monday night.

The temblor struck Monday night PDT (1 p.m. local time) under the Sea of Okhotsk. Officials said it was 373 miles below ground and did not result in any tsunamis.

But for reasons that are not entirely clear, it triggered several erroneous reports of quakes in California.

Leslie Gordon, USGS spokeswoman in Menlo Park, said the false reports of earthquakes in Gerber, the Monterey area and Gilroy were triggered by the Russian quake. Those reports were retracted within minutes, Gordon said. A couple of the reports were erroneously reissued, then retracted again.

False reports occasionally are registered by USGS automatic earthquake sensors, she said.

Earthquakes are among the most destructive and common of geologic phenomena. Several million earthquakes are estimated to occur worldwide each year (the vast majority are too small to feel, but their motions can be measured by arrays of seismometers). Historically, most of Arizona has experienced low levels of recorded seismicity, with infrequent moderate and large earthquakes in the state. Comprehensive analyses of seismicity within Arizona have not been previously possible due to a lack of seismic stations in most regions, contributing to the perception that widespread earthquakes in Arizona are rare.

Debunking that myth, a new study published by Arizona State University researchers found nearly 1,000 earthquakes rattling the state over a three-year period. Jeffrey Lockridge, a graduate student in ASU's School of Earth and Space Exploration and the project's lead researcher, used new seismic data collected as part of the EarthScope project to develop methods to detect and locate small-magnitude earthquakes across the entire state of Arizona. EarthScope's USArray Transportable Array was deployed within Arizona from April 2006 to March 2009 and provided the first opportunity to examine seismicity on a statewide scale. Its increased sensitivity allowed Lockridge to find almost 1,000 earthquakes during the three-year period, including many in regions of Arizona that were previously thought to be seismically inactive.

"It is significant that we found events in areas where none had been detected before, but not necessarily surprising given the fact that many parts of the state had never been sampled by seismometers prior to the deployment of the EarthScope USArray," says Lockridge. "I expected to find some earthquakes outside of north-central Arizona, where the most and largest events had previously been recorded, just not quite so many in other areas of the state."

Twin earthquakes that devastated rural villages in northwest Iran on the weekend killed 306 people, most of them women and children, and have sparked fears of disease outbreak, officials said on Monday. Another 3,037 people were injured, of whom 2,011 were given first aid at the scene and the rest were taken to hospital, where 700 surgeries were performed, Health Minister Marzieh Vahid told lawmakers in a report published on the parliament's website.

"We are continuing the search for bodies," she said. Authorities called off rescue operations on Sunday after saying all possible survivors had been recovered.

Date-Time:
Tuesday, August 14, 2012 at 02:59:42 UTC
Tuesday, August 14, 2012 at 12:59:42 PM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location:
49.796°N, 145.113°E

Depth:
625.7 km (388.8 miles)

Region:
SEA OF OKHOTSK

Distances:
160 km (100 miles) ENE (66°) from Poronaysk, Russia

361 km (225 miles) NNE (28°) from Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Russia

445 km (277 miles) SSE (160°) from Okha, Russia

1630 km (1013 miles) NNE (14°) from TOKYO, Japan

A swarm of more than 150 earthquakes over two days last month caused a previously dormant volcano to erupt beneath the Pacific Ocean, a scientist said Monday.

The eruption of the Havre Volcano, about halfway between New Zealand and Tonga, is believed to have caused a floating island of pumice larger than 4,000 square miles that was encountered by a New Zealand navy ship last week.

Cornel de Ronde, principal scientist of New Zealand's Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences, told Radio New Zealand the source of the pumice had been identified in cooperation with French researchers in Tahiti who monitor earthquakes in the southwest Pacific.

"When they looked at their physical records they saw that on July 17th and 18th, there were some 157 earthquakes of magnitudes between 3.0 and 4.8," he said.

Date and Time:
Sunday, August 12, 2012 at 10:47:06 UTC

Sunday, August 12, 2012 at 06:47:06 PM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location:
35.681°N, 82.516°E

Depth:
11 km (6.8 miles)

Region:
XINJIANG-XIZANG BORDER REGION

Distances:
282 km (175 miles) ESE of Hotan, China

481 km (298 miles) ENE of Leh, India

549 km (341 miles) SSE of Aral, China

560 km (347 miles) ESE of Shache, China

• Two quakes hit northwest Iran near city of Tabriz
• Quakes were 6.4 and 6.3 in magnitude
• Casualties may rise as rescuers reach new areas on Sunday
• Some 16,000 people given emergency shelter

Two powerful earthquakes killed 250 people and injured around 1,800 in northwest Iran, where rescue workers frantically combed the rubble of dozens of villages throughout the night and into Sunday as medical staff desperately tried to save lives.

Thousands huddled in makeshift camps or slept in the streets after Saturday's quakes in fear of more aftershocks, 40 of which have already struck.

Casualty figures are expected to rise, Iranian officials said, as some of the injured were in critical condition while others were still trapped under the rubble inaccessible to rescue workers hampered by darkness in the first hours after the quakes.

Six villages were destroyed and about 60 sustained more than 50 percent damage, Iranian media reported. About 110 villages were damaged in the quakes, Deputy Interior Minister Hassan Ghadami was quoted by Fars as saying.

Photographs posted on Iranian news websites showed numerous bodies, including children, lying on the floor of a white-tiled morgue in the town of Ahar and medical staff treating the injured in the open air as dusk fell.

Northwestern Iran was struck Saturday by a series of major earthquakes and strong aftershocks, as state TV reported at least 180 dead, 1,350 injured and at least six villages leveled.Officials asked residents in affected areas to stay outdoors through the night, the Fars news agency reported.The U.S. Geological Survey put the first earthquake, which struck midday, at magnitude 6.4, followed by a 6.3 quake. There were numerous aftershocks, registering as high as magnitude 5.0.