November 25, 2013
The strongest quaking ever seen on video
Posted by Austin Elliott
Earthquake videos abound on Youtube, but there are a select few that truly stand apart for the astonishing strength of the ground motion they capture. Even with gargantuan earthquakes that have hit tech-savvy, video-grabbing cities, very few cameras have ever been located in places that experienced truly extreme ground motions. Of course, in the future this number will increase.
For now, in all my perusal of YouTube quake videos, I have seen none that surpass the shaking intensity recorded by cameras in the 2010 Haiti and the 1995 Kobe earthquakes.
First we start with Kobe, the M6.9 90’s classic–an iconic earthquake scene for the generation, in which a sleeping Japanese office worker is awakened and then chased around the room by furniture:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEfnCoqZWYY]
In that same earthquake, a convenience store camera captured some lateral g’s:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE5tv_OomDM]
…including another angle that was famously used opportunistically as a crude seismogram:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxitIewLv9c]
After that, no other video recording of such strong shaking existed–that I know of–until January, 2010, when Port-au-Prince, Haiti was profoundly rocked by a M7.0 earthquake. This video may take the cake. The shaking is so strong that nearly everything falls to a resting place. Once it’s all on the floor, the heavy shaking continues, but you can scarcely see it because there are no more items to wobble and topple. What sets these clips apart from all others is the people getting truly thrown from their feet.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMsb_lLGup4]
A second video from PaP shows several scenes from the National Library, including the horrific collapse of a neighboring building. It’s a sobering video, so be prepared. Once again, it shows people and furniture being heaved in a way I have not seen in any video but from this and the Kobe earthquake.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oSmqqJUfcc]
Beyond these, the competitors appear fairly far behind. A 12th floor bar in Chile sways wildly during the 2010 M8.8:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttYJ1DuD_Vs]
…and a hostel nearby gets violently shaken [mind the dreadful soundtrack]:
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsU9KWPdj5c]
The Tohoku earthquake may be a legitimate competitor, but the duration of shaking is so long you almost become jaded when watching it. Furthermore the epicenter was far offshore, meaning the highest accelerations were limited to the seafloor. You can appreciate the differences in the nature of shaking (intensity versus duration) with a comparison of the ShakeMaps from Tohoku and Haiti. This partial video of the Tohoku quake shows some severe ground motions, but in most others it’s strong but not extreme–just long.
[youtube=http://youtu.be/ldH25btumiw]
What do you think? Have I missed any? Do I overestimate these? Let us know in the comments if you think you have other contenders.
This video is interesting because you can see the effects in the water. It is from Mexicali M7.2 earthquake in April 4, 2010. The pool is in the first floor of the Crowne Plaza Hotel. http://youtu.be/ymQMIyAO0v0
Ah, a contemporary classic–the Mexicali pool. This shaking is indeed impressive, and it brings up an issue I didn’t: I focused on the high accelerations at relatively high frequencies that can throw people and things around in a room; I didn’t consider longer period motion that causes resonance with larger bodies, which clearly also causes very strong oscillations.
Here’s a video from the Tohoku quake that shows some pretty high accelerations. Based on these periodic pulses of shaking, I suspect that a lot of what we’re seeing is structural response (i.e., the building doing and damping its own jitters as the ground shakes below it). I think this video stands out because the vantage and stability of the camera allow you to track the motion of freestanding objects without much interference.
http://youtu.be/zE_TBgYad6c
Thank you Austin, I follow your blog from Seattle. I live in a 4 story house on the bluffs of Puget Sound and will be moving in future in part because of what I have learned about Pacific NW seismology. Perhaps in a future blog you could discuss resources available to people shopping for a house to help find ones that are less exposed to severe damage from large magnitude earthquakes. Thanks for all you do.
Brilliant! And I don’t think you overestimate. Have you seen these from Vanuatu, Christchurch and northern Japan?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMAOgiWz1Ng
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmIRYCaz3lY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2WNYdW8vEo
Those are great contenders, Stacey. And I actually hadn’t seen the Chch one. Good views of that quake come in scant numbers, bet they do indeed pack a punch. It’s interesting to note that the Chch quake (M6.3) gives ~2 people-heaving jolts before calming back down to just “severe” shaking, standing in contrast to the M7.0 Haiti quake that continues throwing people around for the better part of half a minute. Logarithms.
Also, a hardware store is pretty low on my list of places to be during a temblor. Flying pitchforks and bandsaws, aiyeee!
Yeah definitely. I’ve not seen something like the Haiti videos since the Kobe one. Another one from Guatemala in 2012 is similar to the Chch one. The earthquake in Mexico in 2012 caused some drama in high-rises in Mexico city (this year or last) lasting a while but I think that might have been inside a high-rise.
2012 Guatemala
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFDTM8G5jGg
2012 Mexico (Guerrero)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4nDopOrGB8
Oh yeah, there are some surprise heavy jolts in that Guatemala one. A nice illustration of why you *don’t* try to run outside–you just don’t know what’s coming. Furthermore even with those brief jolts you end up with all sorts of egress hazards: spilled water, chunks of concrete, other people!
Hi Austin, it would be interesting, if you get a chance, to report the PGAs and ShakeMap intensities associated with each of these events. From a preparedness and mitigation standpoint, that could help people wrap their head around the fact that magnitude isn’t everything, when it comes to ground motion.
For instance, with your example of the Canterbury earthquakes, I was standing on a steep-ish hillside in Sumner, New Zealand, at 2:20 pm on 13 June 2011, not far from an accelerometer that recorded a PGA of 2.2 g. Yet that was a Mw6.0 event. It was still a bit of a wild ride…mogul run is more like it.
You know, this one, offshore Northern California just a few days before the big Haiti quake in 2010, also produced a couple remarkably strong lurches captured in this video. Love the freaked out cat:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTPavuKbjzU
[…] pulls rightward beneath them. Unlike being tossed or thrown by strong, quick accelerations as we’ve seen in other major earthquakes, these people are losing their footing and leaning as the ground pulls away from them in one […]
[…] pulls rightward beneath them. Unlike being tossed or thrown by strong, quick accelerations as we’ve seen in other major earthquakes, these people are losing their footing and leaning as the ground pulls away from them in one […]