UPDATED: 8.9 Earthquake, 6300 dead, Aftershocks of 7.0, thousands missing (w/photos)

Crosswalk News ^ | 12.26.2004

[BobS]

I am wondering if there will be a reflexive earthquale on the opposite side of Earth from there, such as in CA. Again.

[berkeleybeej]

I think that FreeRepublic Central in Fresno my want to be on the Alert beings that an occurance one place in the "Pacific Ring of Fire" be foretell an occurance elsewhere.

Hunh??

[BobS]

earthquale=earthquake. One of my fingers is sore.

[VNam68]

Ping

[Strategerist]

Despite fervent beliefs to the contrary there are no discernable patterns to large quakes on a world-wide scale allowing you to predict them.

[expatguy]

We are all dumbfounded here. Lots of people felt the quake here. We are okay where we are at. Most of the people will be dead from the tsunamis.

Nobody here has ever felt an earthquake before.

An American Expat in Southeast Asia

[Poincare]

Chile 1960. 9.6 very long rupture, longer than the entire San Andreas from the gulf to Mendicino. subduction zone type quake.

[redheadtoo]

I think that aftershocks can be stronger

If a fault line experiences multiple tremors then the largest of them is considered to be the main earthquake. Smaller tremors, that occur before the main quake, are called fore shocks just as smaller tremors, that occur after the main quake, are called aftershocks.

Of course these designations are just human inventions to try and classify quakes and have no actual relation to the death and damage that a particular earthquake causes.

Being a Californian has made me an amateur expert on earthquakes. I have been in the state for every big quake since Sylmar.

[Lady Jag]

There was an 8.1 in the southern most state of Australia a few days ago. Help me find it?

[Strategerist]

Actually it was several hundred miles south of Australia and New Zealand. No damage.

[TomGuy]

It was a big one:

"All the planet is vibrating" from the quake, said Enzo Boschi, the head of Italy's National Geophysics Institute. Speaking on SKY TG24 TV, Boschi said the quake even disturbed the Earth's rotation.

from Yahoo news report

[jimbo123]

Photo wire from Yahoo:

http://news.search.yahoo.com/search/news/?ei=ISO-8859-1&c=news_photos&p=tsunami

[wimpycat]

When we got up this morning they were saying 3,000 dead. My husband said there would probably be 10,000 dead. But then not long ago we started hearing estimates of 7,000 to 9,000 dead, and now he's predicting 30,000+ dead.

It's really impossible to say at this point, what with communications being down in the hard-hit areas, and likely thousands washed out to sea, never to be seen again.

[Lady Jag]

3:14 p.m. December 23, 2004

SYDNEY, Australia – An extremely powerful earthquake struck the ocean floor between Australia and Antarctica early Friday, causing buildings to shake hundreds of miles away on the island of Tasmania, authorities said. There were no reports of damage or injuries.

The magnitude 8.1 quake hit 305 miles north of Macquarie Island just before 2 a.m., according to the United States Geological Survey's Web site. An earthquake of magnitude 8 is capable of doing tremendous damage if it occurs in an urban region.

The earthquake was felt throughout Australia's southern island state of Tasmania, said Cvetan Sinadinovski of Geoscience Australia.

Buildings in parts of the state rattled for up to 15 seconds, but no one was injured and structures were in no danger of collapsing, he said.

"If it happened underneath a population center in Australia, this would probably have destroyed a whole city," Sinadinovski said.

A magnitude 8 quake rocked Japan's northern island of Hokkaido on Sept. 25, 2003, injuring nearly 600 people. An 8.4 magnitude tremor that stuck off the coast of Peru on June 23, 2001, killed 74.

Macquarie Island is the exposed crest of the undersea Macquarie Ridge, which is caused by the meeting of two tectonic plates and is the only place where rock from the Earth's mantle four miles below the ocean floor is being pushed above sea level, according to the Australian Antarctic Division's Web site.

Sinadinovski said large earthquakes are common in the Macquarie Ridge region, occurring every year or two, but Friday's was the strongest quake there since 1924.

[Lady Jag]

Thanks...see #54.

[TomGuy]

[Irish_Thatcherite]

It's Bush and Karl Rove's fault!

Ya, because Global Warming causes earthquakes! /sarcasm

[LasVegasMac]

reflexive earthquake

Not sure there is such a thing.

???

LVM

[Heatseeker]

I am especially concerned about Diego Garcia island, the most important US military base in the Indian Ocean. Given that there's pretty much open water in a straight line from Diego Garcia all the way back to the epicenter of the earthquake, I can imagine considerable tsunami damage to the island.

I've been worrying abut DG since last night - I can't imagine a place more vulnerable. And no news at all that I've heard. There is a Diego Garcia Naval Media Center BBS but no posts more recent than 12/20/04.

[BookaT]

Still kind of wish I was in thailand right now:-)