HUGE 8.8 Earthquake in Chile

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8540289.stm

I guess it's too early to tell the extent of the damage it may have caused, but DAMN.

We're under a tsunami advisory in Hawaii.

This won't be good....

there was a 7.1 about 14 hours ago off the coast of Okinawa... Pacific Rim is shifty

8.8 seems like an unreal number tbh

meaning that it's crazy that it happened, not that the number is wrong

almost 50 years after the 9.5 in Chile... which is the largest quake ever recorded.

for perspective: the aftershocks that are hitting are as big as the Haiti earthquake.

if it's 8.8 then it's the 7th largest ever recorded: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes#Largest_earthquakes_by_magnitude

My father-in-law is in Chile to do the Atacama Crossing. Haven't heard anything from him yet.

(this is him, btw)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/8535487.stm

Oh shit. What did Santiago do? Are they gay people there?

8.8 seems like an unreal number tbh

Real, but yes, historically huge. Still looking for better maps on the epicenter vs. most populated areas

Getting newsflashes about potential huge waves to hit Sydney tomorrow morning.

it's even on google earth!

My father-in-law is in Chile to do the Atacama Crossing. Haven't heard anything from him yet.

― nate woolls, Saturday, February 27, 2010 11:52 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

if he's in atacama i'm sure he's fine. just hearing from the astronomers there. they lost power/comms for a few hours, but they're ok.

the desert is ~1000m N of the epicentre

Lots of reporters/reportage neglects to note the Richter Scale is exponential. Thus, this 8.8 was some 1000 times as powerful as the quake in Haiti!

logarithmic

facts about the 9.5 1960 earthquake from wiki:
"Various estimates of the total number of fatalities from the earthquake and tsunamis have been published, with the USGS citing studies with figures of 2231, 3000, or 5700 killed,[2] and another source uses an estimate of 6000 dead"

i guess the numbers are gonna be lower than those of Haiti

Logarithmic not exponential

xpost

sorry, duplicating caek there

i'm not particularly surprised journalists don't mention the maths of the scale. it's a difficult concept and it's not particularly relevant to the experience on the ground.

(an exponential scale would be crazy btw)

http://d.yimg.com/a/p/afp/20100227/capt.photo_1267270411414-5-0.jpg?x=348&y=345&q=85&sig=XvaVQY_xUoVxGKtFSsB3cw--

Hawaii Tsunami Warning info.

Oh, yeah, logarithmic, whoops. But I think it is important that reporters somehow explain the scale/calculations. A couple of weeks ago there was some little 3.x earthquake in Illinois, and I heard a lot of reporters say, well, that was about half what hit Haiti. Um, no, try again. So I think it's totally relevant to the experience on the ground, if only to convey that 8.8 is not just some 1.8 mysterious points higher but, as I posted, 1000x more powerful. That's just nuts, and useful if only to demonstrate how lucky Chile may be (relatively speaking), or what a difference good infrastructure provides, etc.

am still dreading what the news of the day holds...

HILO 1105AM HST 2.5 METERS
HONOLULU 1137AM HST 0.5 METERS
KAHULUI 1126AM HST 2.2 METERS
NAWILIWILI 1142AM HST 0.9 METERS
HALEIWA 0.5 METERS
KAWAIHAE 0.6 METERS

Yeah, I live in Chicago and was infuriated by the reports of "our" earthquake being HALF of Haiti's. Um, not at all, idiots.

doesn't the depth of the quake make a huge difference too?

this was a not great way to start the day. Was half reading Michael J. Fox's autobiography lying hungover at 8.30am in my friend's flat when i got a text saying there had been a massive quake in Chile, went on the BBC and noticed that there were fatalities and some were from the region that I have most of my family over there in (the Maule). Got a bus and went to my parents house, had a shower and waited til they woke up to tell my dad. He phoned one of my cousins on the mobile and everyone is fine. Went back to sleep off my hangover pretty relieved.

holy shit

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/02/earthquake_in_chile.html

this just flat out fucking sucks. if there were any justice in the world, there'd be a 10.0 earthquake in Pat Roberson's house only.

damn, those pictures.

A TSUNAMI WARNING IS IN EFFECT FOR

CHILE / PERU / ECUADOR / COLOMBIA / ANTARCTICA / PANAMA /
COSTA RICA / NICARAGUA / PITCAIRN / HONDURAS / EL SALVADOR /
GUATEMALA / FR. POLYNESIA / MEXICO / COOK ISLANDS / KIRIBATI /
KERMADEC IS / NIUE / NEW ZEALAND / TONGA / AMERICAN SAMOA /
SAMOA / JARVIS IS. / WALLIS-FUTUNA / TOKELAU / FIJI /
AUSTRALIA / HAWAII / PALMYRA IS. / TUVALU / VANUATU /
HOWLAND-BAKER / NEW CALEDONIA / JOHNSTON IS. / SOLOMON IS. /
NAURU / MARSHALL IS. / MIDWAY IS. / KOSRAE / PAPUA NEW GUINEA /
POHNPEI / WAKE IS. / CHUUK / RUSSIA / MARCUS IS. / INDONESIA /
N. MARIANAS / GUAM / YAP / BELAU / JAPAN / PHILIPPINES /
CHINESE TAIPEI

a+ modernist poetry

Wouldn't you expect a lot of these guys to start noticing if there were a Tsunami on the way? Or isn't this data live?

http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/

http://www.prh.noaa.gov/ptwc/

Interesting site. It says there is currently no data for the one right off the coast of Chile, wondering if the earthquake threw off all the sensor equipment.

In Japan, though:

http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/plot_dart.php?station=21418&uom=M&width=400&height=220

those pictures are like whoah but still seems like they've weathered it all much better than haiti.

that is like 35 meters! xp

that's the actual earthquake though making the numbers crazy, right? not a wave.

a 40m coastal wave last night would make the news (mid-ocean waves are never more than a few cm even when they are tsunamis)

Tsunami advisory up the entire Pacific coast of NA -- Alaska even!

http://www.accuweather.com/watches-warnings.asp?partner=forecastfox&zipcode=94040&county=CAc085&zone=CAz508&metric=0

ughhhhh fuck

First waves to hit French Polynesia quite low at the moment.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61Q29120100227

it's been a while since calc but iirc isn't a change of ~2 on a logarithmic scale a ~100-fold difference?

yeah, it's based on 10 so a change of n is times 10^n

yes

And a giant Google spreadsheet list of Chilean newssources: http://spreadsheets.google.com/lv?key=tyy34f912Y9Dzp3x6kyOLTw&toomany=true

Santiago is a very nice city, best of luck to everyone in Chile.

This stuff's delicious, if you want to support Chilean commerce:

http://www.volunteer.blogs.com/winewaves/images/root_1_colchagua_cabernet_2005.jpg

all my folks in Chile are accounted for, but my mom's apartment is uninhabitable. i don't even know what she means by that exactly b/c i got this second-hand via my aunt.

it may be that the building didn't topple but sustained enough structural damage that it has to be torn down? or maybe the apartment itself is just a mess?

yeah thats what I was thinking: some of the photos I saw were of very precariously crooked/leaning blocks of apartments that were still in one piece, but clearly very very structurally unsound.

From the sound of it a lot of buildings did what they were supposed to do -- not completely collapse and crush people -- but they're essentially unlivable now. The numbers are pretty staggering and this is a country about to head into winter; right now it sounds like the main concern will be a combination of repairing infrastructure and setting up temporary housing.

Yeah I was thinking about that this morning: imagining what it'd be like if a city the size of mine suddenly had, say, even a quarter of its entire population unbable to live in their homes. It'd be a nightmare. I mean the bushfires last year razed 2 or 3 tiny rural villages flat - and over a year on, most of those people still have no homes to go back to.

Seems like there's a new 5.0-ish quake every hour, still.

hearing more from family i have over there and apparently the historic centre of my dad's town is pretty fucked, old churches and other hundreds of years old building round the plaza de armas totally destroyed. Which will be weird to see when I visit later in the year.

Small town that my cousin and her family spend some of their time living in has had about 70% of homes destroyed and there's still no way to telephone there, either by mobile or landline, so no way to know if everyone there is ok, but they should be since their home is relatively new and well built (designed by my grandfather who was a great lover of putting loads of steel into his buildings).

still shouldn't be too bummed out, my octogenarian gran apparently was in great spirits talking to my dad on the phone yesterday, in the middle of making sopaipillas.

Hearing about historic town centers being destroyed makes me sad. Hopefully the buildings can be restored and made stronger.

I realize it's early in the rescue and recovery process, but I'm pretty amazed by the relatively low death toll. Anyone dying in a natural disaster is a tragedy of course, but this seems miraculous. The Kobe earthquake, which was not nearly as strong, claimed 6,500 lives. I'm guessing that the construction standards in Kobe and Concepción are similar in a lot of ways - modern and safe buildings mixed with old and vulnerable ones. It's very, very fortunate that the toll isn't higher.

kobe is probably denser, population-wise? could be wrong.

I remember watching a documentary about Kobe some years ago. Two things stood out: first, the ground was made up of a lot of fine sedimentary material (clays etc), and this material literally liquefied as the seismic waves traveled through it. Second, much of the residential housing was built with typhoons rather than quakes in mind, so they had incredibly heavy tile roofs sitting atop relatively light wooden support. Deadly combination.

I am utterly amazed:

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/earth-20100301.html

The Feb. 27 magnitude 8.8 earthquake in Chile may have shortened the length of each Earth day.

JPL research scientist Richard Gross computed how Earth's rotation should have changed as a result of the Feb. 27 quake. Using a complex model, he and fellow scientists came up with a preliminary calculation that the quake should have shortened the length of an Earth day by about 1.26 microseconds (a microsecond is one millionth of a second).

Perhaps more impressive is how much the quake shifted Earth's axis. Gross calculates the quake should have moved Earth's figure axis (the axis about which Earth's mass is balanced) by 2.7 milliarcseconds (about 8 centimeters, or 3 inches). Earth’s figure axis is not the same as its north-south axis; they are offset by about 10 meters (about 33 feet).

By comparison, Gross said the same model estimated the 2004 magnitude 9.1 Sumatran earthquake should have shortened the length of day by 6.8 microseconds and shifted Earth's axis by 2.32 milliarcseconds (about 7 centimeters, or 2.76 inches).

Gross said that even though the Chilean earthquake is much smaller than the Sumatran quake, it is predicted to have changed the position of the figure axis by a bit more for two reasons. First, unlike the 2004 Sumatran earthquake, which was located near the equator, the 2010 Chilean earthquake was located in Earth's mid-latitudes, which makes it more effective in shifting Earth's figure axis. Second, the fault responsible for the 2010 Chiliean earthquake dips into Earth at a slightly steeper angle than does the fault responsible for the 2004 Sumatran earthquake. This makes the Chile fault more effective in moving Earth's mass vertically and hence more effective in shifting Earth's figure axis.

Gross said the Chile predictions will likely change as data on the quake are further refined.

OMG

Just as Nostradamus prophesied!!!

SRSLY tho, that's f-ing crazy.

I am less amazed that the earthquake shortened earth's period of rotation by 1.8 microseconds and more amazed that the human race is able to tell how much it has been shortened to such precision

i'd say both things are equally OMG.

I am almost, but not quite, as amazed by the fact that the internet has made me aware of these matters. I would never think to read the NASA website unless they were blowing up the moon.

unless they were blowing up the moon.

obviously you haven't been checking it on a regular basis. hope you're sitting down...

I am less amazed that the earthquake shortened earth's period of rotation by 1.8 microseconds and more amazed that the human race is able to tell how much it has been shortened to such precision

― T-R-A-P-S-T-R (Curt1s Stephens), Tuesday, 2 March 2010 06:24 (1 hour ago) Bookmark

^^^this

they haven't measured it though, right? it's just an estimate. it's probably more like 1.9 microseconds. amateurs!

sorry yeah gotta present both sides, we ain't science communication

;)

haha i was gonna say it's not like some dudes were sittin' there with a stopwatch or some shit but didn't wanna spoil the fun :)

We just need a similar sized earthquake on the other side of the earth knock it back again.

rock and roll is here to stay

My father-in-law is in Chile to do the Atacama Crossing. Haven't heard anything from him yet.

― nate woolls, Saturday, February 27, 2010 6:52 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark

I'm amazed that a 78 year old dude is trekking 150 miles across a desert

The Atacama is way north of the quake zone, FWIW.

yeah that is just bad-ass to the MAX

He landed in Santiago on Thursday, and set off to San Pedro(?) from there which is something like a 24 hour coach trip. Still haven't heard from him, but that's not unusual for him.

of all the videos taken during the quake, this one is pretty scary: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=689_1267534289

so is this one (15th floor apt. in Santiago) - you get an idea at just how long it was rattling for: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=820_1267546428

That second one is truly knee-buckling. Guy trying to calm the screaming woman, "va a pasar, va a pasar".. and then how it keeps getting stronger...

Yeah that second one is o_O

Its funny, as a young child growing up in the Midwest I was terrified of tornadoes and remember wishing I lived out West where they "only" had earthquakes. Seems I've come around on that feeling as I've gotten older.

dude i dunno tornadoes are the scariest natural disaster besides like a tsunami imo, earthquake def close

I was living in nashville when the tornadoes hit in '98, actually watched an F2 tear through downtown from my office

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Nashville_tornado_outbreak

but for some reason I'm not that afraid of tornadoes? it's creepy to watch the tumbling clouds in the sky, impending tornadoes make for a freaky weather event but they seem random and evadable

tsunamis are way more terrifying to me, maybe it's from seeing the last wave

or from recurring nightmares of standing on a beach with an unavoidable sky high wall of water coming

Oh I'm still a little scared of tornadoes, but I've watched three of 'em pass over me in my lifetime, so I've come to terms with them in a weird sort of way. I don't ever want one bearing down on me, but I'm not as terrified as I once was. Plus, from pure statistics, less likely to be killed in a tornado. I mean, I've seen towns completely flattened, but no one killed. Hard to imagine an earthquake destroying an entire town and no one dying.

growing up in the rural midwest kinda dulled me to tornadoes. mostly i guess because you could see them coming? not like the funnel cloud itself (only saw them in the distance), but seeing the furrows in the clouds was like "oh dang i guess it's tornado time." pretty, too.

an earthquake, though, just happens while yr sitting around eating dinner or sleeping or whatever. ditto tsunamis.

yeah they're definitely beautiful, they just freak me out - agreed that if you know it's coming it's possible to be safe, but it'll fuck your house up and stuff

Both tornadoes and tsunamis usually can be predicted or at least the warning signs are recognizable. Earthquakes come out of absolutely nowhere. They are totally freaky that way. Tsunami inundation zones are pretty close to the coast. 200 yards inland and you're safe. Sirens are blarring. Earthquakes just strike. Anyone who has lived in an earthquake prone area knows the underlying fear. "When will it happen?" When a tremor starts, "Is this the big one?"

the physics of spinup

http://scienceblogs.com/builtonfacts/2010/03/spinning_up_the_earth.php

http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/7798/c2522450323m.jpg

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/03/chile_three_days_later.html

http://inapcache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/chile_03_02/c35_22450963.jpg

this is round the corner from my gran's house.

Family survives devastating Haiti quake, but flees to Chile

Aftershock of 6 Richter last night in the Valparaiso area (where my mother lives). These are quite nerve-wracking so she's decided to stay with friends for a while.

Not to make light of anything about this situation, but that image looks like an outtake from a Fitzcarraldo remake.

7.2 reported

yeah was about to say^ my mom's packed her bags and headed north to the desert. 15th floor no fun with these aftershocks.

read somewhere that Concepcion moved 10 feet west as a result of the 2/27 quake. if that's true.... mon dieu!