Palu, Indonesia - A strong earthquake which struck a remote region of northern Indonesia on late Saturday afternoon has destroyed dozens of houses, killing at least four people, disaster management officials said on Sunday. Several villages have not yet been reached.

The 6.2-magnitude earthquake at 5:41 p.m. local time (0941 GMT) was centered about 12 kilometers (7.4 miles) southeast of Sigi Biromaru, the main town of Sigi Regency in Central Sulawesi province. It struck about 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) deep, making it a shallow earthquake, according to the country's seismological agency.

Rescue workers reached the remote area on Sunday and said damage and casualties were reported in at least nine villages, although efforts were still underway to determine if there are more casualties. "The impact of the earthquake as we have recorded so far is four people dead, seven people seriously injured, and 51 homes severely damaged," a spokesman for Indonesia's National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) said.

Three small earthquakes near Santa Paula were reported early Sunday after six that struck near the same area Saturday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Sunday's first earthquake was reported at 12:05 a.m. and registered a 2.0 on the Richter scale. It was centered six miles north-northwest of Santa Paula and eight miles east of Ojai, and struck 7.5 miles deep, the agency reported.

A 2.0 magnitude quake struck at 12:06 a.m. It was six miles northwest of Santa Paula, six miles east-southeast of Ojai and 12.1 miles deep, officials said.

An earthquake measuring 4.1 on the Richter scale struck the town of Banak, in Bushehr province, Southern Iran on Saturday evening.
The Seismological center of Bushehr province affiliated to the Geophysics Institute of Tehran University registered the quake at 23:47 hours local time (19:47 GMT).

The epicenter of the quake was located in an area 52.07 degrees in longitude and 27.89 degrees in latitude.

There are yet no reports on the number of possible casualties or damage to properties by the quake.

Iran sits astride several major faults in the earth's crust, and is prone to frequent earthquakes, many of which have been devastating.

The worst in recent times hit Bam in southeastern Kerman province in December 2003, killing 31,000 people - about a quarter of its population - and destroying the city's ancient mud-built citadel.

The deadliest quake in the country was in June 1990 and measured 7.7 on the Richter scale. About 37,000 people were killed and more than 100,000 injured in the northwestern provinces of Gilan and Zanjan. It devastated 27 towns and about 1,870 villages.

Tehran alone sits on two major fault lines, and the capital's 14 million residents fear a major quake.

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.