Ahira's Hangar

This is turning into the year of the earthquake! This morning Chile got hit by an 8.8; back in 1960, the country also got whammed by the largest quake ever recorded - a 9.5. Fortunately, now Chile has more quake-resilient buildings, at least in the capital of Santiago. Still, I'm reading that there's plenty of damage, and 120 confirmed dead. So far, the president hasn't called for outside assistance. And the quake has led to potential tsunamis threatening all of the Pacific Rim, with Hawaii at the highest alert level. Craziness.

Yeah, the only Pacific coastlines not under warnings right now are Washington State and British Columbia. The waves could hit as far away as Russia.

They could hit Hilo about 4PM EST.

At least (unlike Haiti) Chile has strict building codes that they stringently enforce. So it is mainly the older buildings that have been destroyed from what I understand. They also have first responders and the like (also unlike Haiti) and a functional government (also unlike Haiti). So while the quake was some 500 or more times more powerful than the Haiti quake, the death toll should be much much much smaller (though that is small consolation to those who have lost loved ones).

More irreplacable than lives, if you want to be brutally honest about it.

300 reported dead so far. Looks like only Japan took any real strain from waves, and that was only a 1.5 meter swell. Hawaii, Russia etc have cancelled their tsunami warnings.

--A

And thank goodness for that - after the big tsunami in the Indian Ocean a few years ago, I think we all know that the waves can cause as much death and damage as an earthquake.

At least we know the special wave buoys and warning systems put in place after the last huge Chilean earthquake that spawned waves that caused the destruction of Hilo work.

Now if only they could be put in place in all of the other oceans, too...

Chile is a mess - but at least the loss of life is much lower than Haiti, despite the quake being so much stronger. It is going to take a long time for them to rebuild.

More than 700 reported so far, but yes, much much less than Haiti. (And speaking of the Haitians, the rainy season there starts...oh...round about now. It's just not getting any better for them.)

--A

Apparently the quake was strong enough to shift the planet's axis (just a tiny bit) and change the length of the day (again, so tiny no one would ever be able to detect it without high tech instruments).

Another 6.6 quake...Taiwan this time. This is crazy.

--A

A day or so before the Chilean quake, there was a pretty good sized one somewhere off of Japan, too. Part of Japan had been put under tsunami warnings, and a couple of days later...

Makes me wonder if there is anything to that theory that's been out there a while that speculates that large quakes somehow trigger other quakes.

Either that or all of this is a buildup to 12/21/12 and the end of the world.

At least it was "only" a 6.6 quake in Taiwan. Still major. One big earthquake is enough to test the resources of international aid, never mind multiple quakes.
The large-quake-begets-more-quakes idea sounds plausible to me, but I don't know it well.
We could start a bet as to which of us accurately predicts what form the apocalypse will take.

Does seem to be a lot of quake activity in a short time...as for one causing another, they're all on different faults, aren't they?

--A

Good point. But maybe if a quake at one fault line is big enough, it can affect another fault far away. Or maybe not.

The ones in Japan, Taiwan, and Chile would all involve different faults, but all might possibly involve the Pacific Plate? Or at least plates all pushing against the Pacific Plate?

Could be. And a 6.something one in Turkey now... This is crazy.

--A

Yeah...we're joking about 2012 and the end of the world, but for people caught in these earthquakes, their world is already gone.

I looked up tectonic plates: from what I can gather, Chile and Haiti sit on neighbouring plates - the South American and Caribbean plates. If you look at a map of the Caribbean plate, you see that it's like a small blob squeezed by larger ones. From Wikipedia:

"Roughly 3.2 million square kilometers (1.2 million square miles) in area, the Caribbean Plate borders the North American Plate, the South American Plate, the Nazca Plate and the Cocos Plate. These borders are regions of intense seismic activity, including frequent earthquakes, occasional tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions."

Poor Haiti: stuck between a rock and a hard place, figuratively and literally.

Japan and Taiwan appear to be on the Philippine Plate, which is trapped between the immense Pacific and Eurasian Plates.
Turkey seems to be on the Arabian Plate, which again is a smaller plate pinched by bigger ones - the African, Eurasian and Indian Plates.