Thursday, March 18, 2010
Strong Aftershock Shakes Chile
Another strong aftershock has jolted Chile, nearly a week after the deadly 8.8 magnitude earthquake caused widespread destruction in the South American country. In the badly-hit city of Concepcion, some residents ran into the streets Friday as the magnitude 6.6 tremor shook the area. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage. Concepcion was the city closest to the epicenter of the Feb. 27 quake. Dozens of aftershocks have been reported since the initial quake occurred.
Meanwhile, Chile's ambassador to the United Nations says last week's earthquake cost the nation's economy $30 billion and will cost at least that much to rebuild.
In a briefing with reporters Friday at UN headquarters in New York, Ambassador Heraldo Muñoz said the agriculture and wine industry alone lost $280 million in the initial earthquake. He said the fishing industry took a hard hit as well, with entire fishing villages wiped out.
The Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, was also at the briefing to represent what she said was the commitment of the international community to helping Chile. She said that next month, she would bring a group of wealthy donors to Chile in an effort to raise money for reconstruction.
Muñoz said a telethon would be held in Chile late Friday and into Saturday to raise funds for relief efforts. Muñoz said he believes visiting UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon may participate in the event. Ban was expected to meet Friday in Santiago with President Michelle Bachelet and President-elect Sebastian Pinera, who takes office March 11. Ban also was expected to visit Concepcion.
Ambassador Muñoz said there are signs the nation is recuperating. He said the capital, Santiago, is operating almost normally. He also noted that while Concepcion is still in bad shape, 58 percent of the city's automatic teller machines are operational.
Chile Thursday declared a three-day mourning period to remember those lost in last Saturday's quake. The official death toll stands at 802, but the ambassador says the figure will be lowered because in some places the missing were counted as dead. Bachelet has said it could take at least three or four years to rebuild the country.
Chile Earthquake Among Strongest Since 1900
Based on U.S. Geological Survey figures, Saturday's 8.8-magnitude earthquake in Chile could rank as one of the most powerful in history. If the magnitude of the Chilean earthquake stands, it would be tied as the fifth-strongest earthquake recorded since 1900, when records were first kept. An earthquake off the coast of Ecuador in 1906 also was recorded to have a magnitude of 8.8.
The most powerful earthquake recorded also occurred in Chile, in 1960. It had a magnitude of 9.5. In southern Chile alone, that earthquake killed approximately 1,655 people, left about two million homeless, and caused $550 million in damage.
The strongest earthquake in recent years -- and the third strongest since 1900 -- was a magnitude 9.1 earthquake off the coast of Sumatra in 2004. That quake spawned the tsunami that killed almost 228,000 people in South Asia.
The 1960 Chile earthquake generated a tsunami that caused 61 deaths and $75 million of damage in Hawaii, 138 deaths and $50 million damage in Japan, and another 32 dead and missing in the Philippines. It also caused $500,000 in damage on the west coast of the United States.
Throughout history, the most powerful earthquakes have not necessarily been the deadliest. The deadliest earthquake of modern times was recorded in 1556 in central China. More than 830,000 people were reported killed in that quake, which had an estimated magnitude of 8.
Friday, March 5, 2010
A brief history of earthquakes
The world’s first seismograph was invented in A.D. 132 by the Chinese mathematician Cheng Heng. The device had eight wooden dragons each holding a ball. When an earthquake occurred, a ball dropped from a dragon’s mouth into a receptacle below, indicating the direction of the tremor. It could predict an earthquake centered in a rural area up to 600 kilometers (373 miles) away from the capital city.
The Richter magnitude scale was developed in 1935 by Charles F. Richter. It is a mathematical device to compare the size of an earthquake based on its magnitude, which is determined from the logarithm of the amplitude of waves recorded by seismographs. A disastrous earthquake measuring 8.0 on the Richter scale takes place once a year.
A massive earthquake registering a magnitude of 7.0 hit Haiti last month. Each year 130,000 earthquakes that measure more than 3.0 - the same magnitude as the earthquake that recently occurred around Seoul - occur worldwide.
Animals might sense changes too subtle to register on modern instruments. A toad migration phenomenon was spotted just a couple of days before the Sichuan earthquake in 2008. Countless pet owners claimed to have witnessed their cats and dogs acting strangely before the earthquake devastated Kobe in 1995.
One newspaper reported that an earthquake monitoring center in Pyongyang operates by focusing on the unique behavior of each animal. Earthquake-watchers in China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region monitor snake farms, insisting the reptiles “can sense an earthquake from 120 kilometers away, three to five days before it happens.”
If wind is the earth’s breath, an earthquake is its pulse. However, humans often forget this truth, simply averting their eyes.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
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