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April 25, 2017
Strong earthquake widely filmed in Chile
A swarm of magnitude ~5-6 earthquakes offshore Chile on April 23 was punctuated two days later by a much larger M6.9 earthquake yesterday evening. While nobody could have specifically predicted the size and timing of this earthquake, it is a terribly unsurprising event, occurring as it did in the midst of this swarm of heightened seismic activity, and in the highly seismically hazardous region of coastal Chile. As has been pointed out …
November 16, 2016
Complex, compound New Zealand earthquake – Part 1: Seismology by Night
Just after midnight last Sunday, the whole country of New Zealand was rocked by a massive earthquake at the north end of the South Island. From the outset, this earthquake was more confounding than most, and as more reports and data amass, we’re gaining a picture of a complicated earthquake that stemmed from the failure of several large faults in succession. These successive failures may have resulted from structural linkages …
September 24, 2015
Chile keeps having earthquakes
…and keeps surviving them barely scathed. Chile has this year been rocked by its 3rd Great earthquake this century–its 14th if you include the last. Though the earthquake’s magnitude and the resulting Pacific-wide tsunami earned it headlines, it was a very mild earthquake in the global scheme of seismic impacts. This has a bit to do with the nature of offshore, subduction zone earthquakes, and a LOT to do with …
April 2, 2014
Monstrous earthquake in Chile… as it unfolds
The northern coast of Chile has been struck by a Great earthquake this evening, shaking the South America continent for hundreds of miles and thrusting a tsunami onshore and across the Pacific Ocean. Notably, this earthquake occurred in a well known seismic gap, the sole reach of South America’s Pacific coast subduction zone that did not rupture in the 20th (or 21st) century. In that sense, this was one of …
March 28, 2014
The second largest quake on the planet: photos, videos, and its informative legacy
As I am sure everyone has recognized by now, one of the biggest earthquakes recorded in our planet’s history–and the biggest in the United States–rocked Alaska for some three+ minutes 50 years ago today. The 1964 Good Friday earthquake, known also as the Great Alaska earthquake, measured magnitude 9.2. The earthquake shocked the fledgling state with catastrophic environmental effects, including most notably the lateral-spreading collapse of entire neighborhoods in the capital …
March 12, 2014
Tohoku tsunami maps: lessons for the Pacific Northwest
As we pass the three-year mark since one of the most astoundingly gargantuan earthquakes in human history, we marvel at the unprecedented opportunity it gave us to understand earthquakes, tsunamis, oceanic subduction, litho-hydro-atmospheric coupling, plate tectonics, and the Earth itself. We can also appreciate, with humble reverence, the lessons it continues to teach us about the social dimensions of disaster trauma, risk, and resilience. Japan continues to struggle, now largely …
August 13, 2013
Another heart-stopping tsunami video from Japan
A “new” video has emerged of the Tohoku tsunami racing inland in a Japanese port town. I don’t know that it’s never been released before, but I sure haven’t seen it, and I’ve seen basically all of them. The video is embedded at the end of this post. Update 8/19/13: I have changed the video link to a more original YouTube video. It appears that the videographer is a Mr. …
June 2, 2013
Danse de la Terre
Last week marked 100 years since the debut of my favorite piece of music of all time: Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. The ballet debuted to a legendary amount of controversy, but its cacophonous, haunting beauty has been recreated and rechoreographed countless times in the past century, including for example this 1975 Pina Bausch version of the culminating “Sacrificial Dance,” which I’m pretty certain forms the main inspiration for the 1983 Thriller …
March 31, 2013
Sunday Reading #2
Here’s the second installment of my now weekly series in which I compile all the neat-o earthquake things I’ve relayed via Twitter over the prior week. National Tsunami Week From March 24-30, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) teamed up to raise awareness of tsunami hazard, assembling a huge number of resources. Get informed about the tsunami risk to your coast line, …
March 28, 2013
National Tsunami Awareness Week – March 24-30, 2013
This week the United States has been recognizing National Tsunami Week, an awareness campaign by NOAA, the USGS, FEMA, and a whole host of other emergency response agencies to ensure that the American public is aware of the tsunami hazard facing our coasts, and that we know what to do about it. The bottom line is that we face threats on all fronts, although they’re greatest along the Pacific shore. …
