If CNN or Fox drags one more hapless frost-bitten shell-shocked body up onto their dais to ask the same questions (what was it like? isn't it something that everyone was so calm? didn't that crew do a great job?) to get the same answers (everybody was calm, no one was hurt, the water was really really cold), I'll have to scream.
I'm thrilled their plane crash went so well and no one was hurt – honest. But the desperation of the MSM to be the One You Watch… it's sickening. You know they wish someone at least almost got hurt. Or that one of the hapless would break down on camera. That would be newsworthy.
I guess Congress agreeing to give Obama the other $350Billion isn't news. Nobody really thought they'd hold out, did they? The plane crash is way more exciting news, just maybe not for five hours.
My earthquake seems so meaningless now. We did have a tremendous aftershock today, one of the slider ones that lasted for probably five long seconds. I should call one of those iReporter hotlines.
Volcán Poás did erupt at 10:30a Tuesday spewing gas, water and sediment.
Apparently, the volcano is "acting within its normal parameters." Huh.
Bad news, good news: the bad news is that one of Costa Rica's inactive fallas (faults)
has become active. The good news is that, while there are thousands of
faults in Costa Rica, only 150 are active. Phew! I was worried there for a minute.
As of now, 128,135 persons in 61 communities have been affected. There are 23 confirmed dead, 8-11 missing (the 5-6 British tourists visiting La Paz at the time of the quake and listed as missing have turned up), water has been restored and all isolated people are believed to have been rescued.
Of critical concern are the 2,500 people now in shelters. Most of them have no homes to return to. Nor do they have diapers, tampons, toothpaste, shampoo, scissors, tissues, hairbrushes… Clothes, they have. Food, they have. Personal items are lacking.
There are excellent photos here. Good information about aftershocks and earthquake preparation there.
This site lists recent activity in chronological order, most recent first. Dates are day/month and they do the nautical time thing. (Are they too lazy to write am or pm?) The last number is the Richter scale. Looks like things are still rockin' over there… The newly active fault is a few km further away from us which must explain why we are not feeling all the shocks still going
on:
15/01/2009 – 16:22 – 3.8
15/01/2009 – 16:18 – 4.1
15/01/2009 – 16:18 – 4.1
15/01/2009 – 15:11 – 2.9
15/01/2009 – 14:14 – 3.4
15/01/2009 – 14:12 – 3.0
15/01/2009 – 14:11 – 3.3
15/01/2009 – 14:09 – 2.7
15/01/2009 – 14:05 – 4.0
15/01/2009 – 10:33 – 3.4
14/01/2009 – 13:50 – 3.2
13/01/2009 – 21:47 – 2.5
13/01/2009 – 16:25 – 2.2
13/01/2009 – 15:36 – 3.7
13/01/2009 – 15:33 – 3.5
13/01/2009 – 04:54 – 2.4
13/01/2009 – 01:09 – 4.3 I think this one was right under my bed. It woke me up. I couldn't get back to sleep till dawn…
12/01/2009 – 21:37 – 4.0
12/01/2009 – 20:23 – 4.1
12/01/2009 – 19:25 – 3.5
12/01/2009 – 18:45 – 2.8
08/01/2009 – 13:21 – 6.2 The biggie.
07/01/2009 – 10:00 – 4.0
I still say hurricanes are easier to deal with because of all that warning. Sebastian Watt, a doctoral student in Oxford’s Department of Earth Sciences, conducted an analysis of our quake. He notes: "… seismic waves, radiating from the earthquake rupture, may trigger an eruption by stirring or shaking the molten rock beneath volcanoes. The disturbances that result from this lead to eruption but, because of the time it takes for pressure to build up inside a volcano and for magma to move towards the surface, an eruption may not occur until some months after the earthquake."
This passes for a "warning" in earthquakelandia. It will have to do. Since I've only felt one shock today, I'm pretty relaxed about earthquakes now. When Wilma flooded Key West, we were all so shocked, numb… like the airplane crash dudes. Key West hadn't seen water like that for at least 85 years. But a few weeks into it, we were all like, "Hey, statistically we're golden. Not again in our lifetime."
So, if this is truly the worst earthquake in 120 years in the central valley, statistically we're golden. Clean up the wreckage and move on as best we can. I'm going with that. I do not care to hear about probabilities and the reality of statistics, thank you.
UPDATE NOT 2 SECONDS AFTER POSTING THIS: Scratch all that being relaxed nonsense. 11pm, just felt 3 sharp jolts, about 3 seconds. I'm scared. Ok, just felt another one: hard. Maybe I'll sleep under the bed tonight.
PHOTO: This photo of the US Airways jet that crashed into the Hudson River Thursday, taken by Janis Krums, brought so much traffic to TwitPic that the site's servers got overloaded.
this is ridiculous, I suspect discrimination. why are you feeling all the aftershocks and I haven’t felt a thing since a week ago???????
you can take a look at the pictures of Cartago’s earthquake in 1910 (previously destroyed in 1841 and 1822)
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=340099
Stuff about earthquakes and volcanoes is very interesting, I was very close to studying geology (but my uncle intervened and let me know……..that I wouldn’t precisely be wealthy hehe)
***
The topic sure is interesting now. I don’t know why I feel these, the boys don’t feel all of them. Maybe because I sit at my desk most of the day working online and on the phone, feet on the floor, butt in a folding chair so I’m very aware of movement. I haven’t noticed one any other time (kitchen, watching tv, shower, walking around on the phone) except when I’m in bed. Someone at lunch the first day said you feel it more on a mountain… maybe that’s true. Jealous?
Hi Saratica
I lived in LA during the BIG earthquake there. I’ve lived in Key Largo for almost twenty years. I’ll take a hurricane over an earthquake every time. But tornadoes are the worst.
D.
***
I was thinking that myself. The only thing I know about tornadoes is from the movie Twister. If conditions are right – and you need complicated dials and stuff to know, way more than a whirligig – you get a tornado. They just appear like an earthquake.
I believe tornadoes directly cause the most damage. Katrina and Wilma brought floods but the ‘cane itself only destroys things not nailed down or without proper corner brackets (ok, I’m oversimplifying here). An earthquake shakes land off of mountain sides taking whatever it has with it and opens up the earth so you can fall in. But a tornado destroys everything in its path. I don’t care how well built it is.
I wonder how a cane wind and a tornado wind compare. I’ll have to google that!
Hurricanes versus Earthquakes
Good construction might spare some houses from damage or total collapse, in a hurricane it might not matter as every single house could be 6 feet under water (just one of the reasons I prefer earthquakes)
***
My only reason for preferring ‘canes is warning time. At least I could vacate the premises before the flood rather than having it surprise me in the middle of the night.
It’s true that a hurricane could result in houses being flooded, but the bottom line is…you have plenty of time before a hurricane makes landfall to get yourself and your darlings to safe ground. That’s not the case with earthquakes.
It’s hard, but not tragic to lose your STUFF. It’s a whole other story when lives are endangered.
True about losing your life but once again good construction makes a big difference, number of deaths attributed direct or indirectly to Katrina 1836 (per wikipedia), our earthquake is not more than 20, if we add up all the dead due to all the earthquakes in CR in the last 30 years…I doubt we would have more than 500, of course that is not a fair comparation but it would be interesting to compare them on a scientific basis
Last week when they were showing houses destroyed by this earthquake there was at least one house that had a full wall collapsed…….and there was not a trace of metal rods (that of course should have been there)
***
Warning time is the big thing… I wrote a dissertation on tornadoes, quakes and ‘canes a little ways up. But my fingers are freezing – don’t I live in the tropics???? – and I need more coffee. Pura vida!
There may be a good warning system for earthquakes. The moon came very close to earth on January 10th. It’s approach may have set of the earthquake. If the moon can lift the ocean and create tides, it can lift magma.
Speaking of tides and warnings, there is also the Mayan calendar;
http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/2012/
***
Thanks, James. This fits in nicely with renewed interest in energy healing. There can be no question of powerful force in the universe!
I Googled too, but I’m having a hard time comparing the Saffir-Simpson scale to the Enhanced Fujita Tornado Damage Scale.
What I do know is, Tropical Storm Mitch spawned an F2 tornado that completely demolished our wood-framed stilt house in North Key Largo in November, 1998. Blew the house and every single thing we owned – except for two bolted-down toilets – one and a half football field lengths into the hardwood hammock that borders us on the North. It could have been worse: we (me, my husband and two kids) were in the house at the time, and aside from the pulled groin muscle our four year old suffered during the time three of us lay piled on top of her to prevent her from blowing away, we were unscathed.
Gracias Dios.
Saratica, you may have heard the urban legend that has sprung up around our experience! I believe it is those tenaciously remaining toilets and the fact that mon Jaques cherie is an African man that has fed the tale of the Black Guy who was reading the newspaper on the throne and looked up to see that his house had blown away!
It is a cheery story!
***
Wow. That is a good story… sorry you had to live it to tell it!!! We need a picture of Jacques on the throne sans house… that would be priceless. Gracias a Dios indeed. You all were spared, that is a miracle. Pura vida!