Earthquakes
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Bizarro Earth

Small quake hits Southern Finland


Sott.net
Sat, 19 Mar 2011 14:03 UTC
Finland Tremor
© YLE UutisgrafiikkaMap showing area affected by minor tremor.

Finland's Institute of Seismology at the University of Helsinki confirmed that a 2.6 magnitude quake had struck the area. Institute Director Pekka Heikkinen said that quakes of tremors of this magnitude are unusual in southern Finland. He noted they only usually occur a few times annually. Around 30 small earth tremors in Finland are usually detected in northern parts of the country.
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Cloud Lightning

2010 Extreme Weather: Deadliest Year In A Generation

Seth Borenstein and Julie Reed Bell
The Huffington Post
Sun, 19 Dec 2010 00:56 UTC
Image
© Unknown
This was the year the Earth struck back.

Earthquakes, heat waves, floods, volcanoes, super typhoons, blizzards, landslides and droughts killed at least a quarter million people in 2010 - the deadliest year in more than a generation. More people were killed worldwide by natural disasters this year than have been killed in terrorism attacks in the past 40 years combined.

"It just seemed like it was back-to-back and it came in waves," said Craig Fugate, who heads the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency. It handled a record number of disasters in 2010.

"The term '100-year event' really lost its meaning this year."

And we have ourselves to blame most of the time, scientists and disaster experts say.


Comment: Interesting how the blame is assigned to those who are struggling daily with the effects of psychopathy at the top (including scientific establishment), and with the influence of those who are in fact responsible for the negligence, mediocrity, political manipulations and lies so prevalent in our nowadays society.


Even though many catastrophes have the ring of random chance, the hand of man made this a particularly deadly, costly, extreme and weird year for everything from wild weather to earthquakes.

Poor construction and development practices conspire to make earthquakes more deadly than they need be. More people live in poverty in vulnerable buildings in crowded cities. That means that when the ground shakes, the river breaches, or the tropical cyclone hits, more people die.
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Bizarro Earth

6.5 Quake Strikes Sea Floor NW of Vanuatu

DAVID FICKLING And JAMES GLYNN
The Wall Street Journal
Thu, 17 Mar 2011 22:57 UTC
Sydney - A magnitude 6.5 earthquake has struck the sea floor northwest of the Vanuatu capital of Port Vila, according to a notice from the U.S. Geological Survey, adding to jitters over tremors in the region following the quake that has devastated parts of Japan.

The notice said the earthquake, at 1:48 p.m. local time, had an epicenter 35 kilometers down, with coordinates 17.5 degrees south and 167.6 degrees east. The location is 77 kilometers northwest of Port Vila, close enough to pose some threat of a tsunami, the USGS said.

"No destructive widespread tsunami threat exists based on historical earthquake and tsunami data. However, earthquakes of this size sometimes generate local tsunamis that can be destructive along coasts located within 100km of the earthquake epicenter," the USGS said in a statement.
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Bizarro Earth

Four quakes measuring 5 points occur east of Honshu


Itar-Tass
Thu, 17 Mar 2011 22:43 UTC
Vladivostok, March 17 (Itar-Tass) - There were four earthquakes with magnitudes 5.0 and above at the eastern coast of the Japanese island of Honshu on Thursday morning. The earth shocks' focuses were at depths from 20 to 39 kilometres, said the US Geological Survey.
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Bizarro Earth

Japan: Tohoku Earthquake Shaking Intensity


Earth Observatory, NASA
Fri, 18 Mar 2011 21:06 UTC
Japan Quake Zone
© Earth Observatory, NASA NASA Earth Observatory Image by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, using data from the USGS Earthquakes Hazard Program and Oak Ridge National Laboratory Geographic Information Science and Technology.
On March 11, 2011, the largest earthquake in Japan's modern history struck off the northeast coast, about 130 kilometers (81 miles) east of the mainland region of Tohoku. Initially categorized as magnitude 8.9, the quake was later revised upward to magnitude 9.0 by the Japanese Meteorological Agency (JMA) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The event shook buildings and damaged infrastructure hundreds of kilometers away. Closer to the main shock, coastal regions were devastated by the quake and the resulting tsunami.

This map shows the ground motion and shaking intensity from the earthquake at dozens of locations across Japan. Each circle represents an estimate of shaking as recorded by the USGS, in conjunction with regional seismic networks. Shades of pale yellow represent the lowest intensity and deep red represents high intensity. The ground shaking data is overlaid on a map of population density provided by Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

A shaking intensity of VI is considered "strong" and can produce "light damage," while a IX on the scale is described as "violent" and likely to produce "heavy damage." The pattern of shaking appears to run parallel to the offshore subduction trench, with the intensity decreasing more from east to west, as opposed to north and south. Ground motion also seems to be more intense in coastal and riverine areas, where settlements are built on softer sediments and less bedrock.
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Alarm Clock

40ft Section Of California Highway Falls Into Pacific Ocean


KSBW.com
Thu, 17 Mar 2011 15:45 UTC
Image
Part of the highway that fell into the Pacific ocean on March 16th 2011
A stretch of California's coastal highway is closed to traffic indefinitely after a chunk of the road fell into the Pacific Ocean.

State transportation workers are scrambling to repair Highway 1 in Monterey County near Rocky Creek Bridge.

A 40-foot section of the two-lane highway crumbled just after 5 p.m. Wednesday following several days of rainy weather. All of the southbound lane is gone, and the soil under the northbound lane also is giving way.

The California Highway Patrol says no one was injured in the slide.

It's not immediately clear what caused the slide or how long the highway will be closed.


Comment: If people in the California area are not awake enough to take these VERY strong indicators that the West Coast of the USA is next in line for a major quake then what can ANYONE do to help them?

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Attention

Canada: 4.3-Magnitude Earthquake Rattles Western Quebec


CTV News
Wed, 16 Mar 2011 06:59 UTC
Image
© unknownSeismologist Fiona Ann Darbyshire says the area around western Quebec and eastern Ontario experience hundreds of small earthquakes a year, but they're usually quite smaller.
A 4.3-magnitude earthquake struck an area covering eastern Ontario and western Quebec Wednesday afternoon, with people from Ottawa to the Greater Montreal Region reporting that they felt the temblor.

Natural Resources Canada says the quake was centered in Hawkesbury, Ont. -- not Lachute, Que., as had earlier been reported. It struck at about 1:36 p.m. ET and lasted about 10 seconds.

There were no reports so far of any damage.

Viewers from across the region have been emailing CTV.ca to say they felt the earth shake beneath their feet. One reader sent an email to CTV News saying she felt a tremor in Ste-Adele, Ste-Anne de Lacs in the Laurentians. Another said she felt a "deep rumble" around 1:35 p.m. in Orleans, Ont., that lasted a "full minute."

Last summer, a 5.0-magnitude quake rattled Ontario, Quebec, and parts of the northeastern United States, sending some residents running into the streets. That quake's epicentre was about 56 kilometres northeast of Ottawa.

Just like last year's shaker, Wednesday's earthquake brought down the website for Earthquakes Canada as Canadians rushed to the site for information.
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Bizarro Earth

Vanuatu: Earthquake Magnitude 6.3


USGS
Wed, 16 Mar 2011 22:26 UTC
Vanuatu Quake_170311
© USGSEarthquake Location
Date-Time:
Thursday, March 17, 2011 at 02:48:02 UTC

Thursday, March 17, 2011 at 01:48:02 PM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location:
17.364°S, 167.696°E

Depth:
26.6 km (16.5 miles)

Region:
VANUATU

Distances:
77 km (47 miles) WNW of PORT-VILA, Efate, Vanuatu

210 km (130 miles) SSE of Luganville, Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu

293 km (182 miles) NW of Isangel, Tanna, Vanuatu

1880 km (1168 miles) NE of BRISBANE, Queensland, Australia
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Evil Rays

Australia: Quake adds to north's disasters

Rosanne Barrett
The Australian
Wed, 16 Mar 2011 12:00 UTC
Image
© Unknown
FIRST it was a cyclone, then flooding, and then came the earthquake.

At 4.08pm yesterday a magnitude-4 earthquake struck about 30km off the coast of Innisfail, in far north Queensland, an area already hard hit by Cyclone Yasi last month and inundated by torrential monsoon rains.

Locals reported the quake to Geosciences Australia from Innisfail, Gordonvale and even Cairns, 70km away from its epicentre.

It was insufficient to cause a tsunami and there were no early reports of damage but locals took to Twitter to bemoan the recent trifecta of natural disasters. Geoscience Australia seismologist David Jepsen said it would have produced "a bit of a shake" and "some rattling of windows" in the Innisfail area.

He ruled out any connection to recent earthquakes in Christchurch or Japan, saying those incidents were too far away to generate a far north Queensland quake.
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Bizarro Earth

And the aftershocks go on: 275 new tremors hit quake-torn Japan as fears grow for missing 10,000 in flattened port town


The Daily Mail, UK
Tue, 15 Mar 2011 00:38 UTC
  • 42 survivors have been pulled out of the rubble
  • Official death toll hits 1,597, but many hundreds believed to be buried under rubble or washed away by waves
  • Toll will soar after around 2,000 bodies were found on the shores of Miyagi prefecture
  • Second explosion at nuclear power plant
  • Number of people contaminated with radiation could reach 160
  • Region hit by hundreds of aftershocks, some up to 6.8-magnitude
  • Rescue operation begins but some areas still cut off by road damage and flood waters
  • 70,000 people evacuated to shelters in Sendai
    •
Forty-two survivors have been pulled from the rubble in the flattened town of Minami Sanrik, where up to 10,000 people are feared to have perished.

Around half the town's 18,000 residents are missing but search and rescue teams are still working desperately through the rubble to try and find more people.

Police are also trying to stop people returning to their homes.

Despite the first tsunami warning being issued to the town that lies two miles from the coastline, some residents decided to stay in their homes instead of fleeing - leading to the high number of missing people, CNN reported today..

Most of the houses in Minami Sanriku have been completely flattened and waterlogged and one house was found even with seaweed inside.

Image
© EPAVillagers carry relief goods in Minami Sanriku, the worst-hit area where almost 10,000 people have gone missing
Image
© EPAJapanese home guard help survivors to safety in the flooded town of Minami Sanriku
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