7.7 Magnitude Quake Hits British Columbia 65
schwit1 writes "A magnitude 7.7 earthquake hit Canada's Pacific coast province of British Columbia on Saturday night, the U.S. Geological Survey reported. The quake was centered 123 miles south-southwest of Prince Rupert at a depth of 6.2 miles. 'Earthquakes Canada said the quake in the Haida Gwaii region has been followed by numerous aftershocks as large as 4.6 and said a small tsunami has been recorded by a deep ocean pressure sensor.
'It was felt across much of north-central B.C., including Haida Gwaii, Prince Rupert, Quesnel, and Houston. There have been no reports of damage at this time,' the agency said in a statement on its website.'"
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, it is. Next question.
Re:Slashdot-worthy? (Score:4, Insightful)
This earthquake was the largest ever recorded in the region, so yes, it is.
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I live right here.. On Vancouver Island. I was up when it happened.. but never felt a thing. Really.
Likewise. I'm in Victoria, and didn't know about it until reading the late news.
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Look at the aftershocks [alaska.edu]. Maybe you'll get lucky. Seems like the fault it really trying to dump some energy.
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Per:
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/earthquake+hits+Haida+Gwaii+Region/7459506/story.html [vancouversun.com]
Emphasis mine
So no.
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Well, duh. Never having felt, or experienced a quake is the point of such a statement.
Fucking pedantics. I haven't had the flu all year.
"Maybe none that you could feel. I'm fairly certain that everybody everywhere has been subject to influenza at one time or another in the last year."
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It's on the north side of the Cascadia subduction zone (but not a subduction quake, and not part of the zone). On the downside, Japan's quake was preceded by a 7.2 foreshock nearby. Could this be a foreshock? On the upside, since this is a different type of quake it seems like a stretch to draw parallels. On the downside, if Cascadia was disturbed by this quake, it could be "shaken loose", or there might be a "mirror" quake on the other side of Cascadia--just south of Mendocino, ie, in Sonoma County Cal
Ocean Seeding (Score:5, Funny)
Ah ha! Proof that seeding the ocean with iron causes earthquakes!
About 1% of the energy of the Japanese earthquake (Score:1, Insightful)
Of course, that didn't stop anyone from fearmongering and once more tens of thousands were evacuated needlessly - ensuring that hundreds or thousands won't follow evacuation orders when a real tsunami is coming. It is about time to stop using logarithmic scales for earthquakes. A 7.7 isn't anywhere near as bad as a 9.0 or a 9.2 that created the tsunamis of Japan iand Indonesia respectively.
0.2 more on the scale is a doubling of the energy released by the earthquake and a doubling of the energy potentially c
Re:About 1% of the energy of the Japanese earthqua (Score:4, Informative)
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Without a doubt. But it just won't create much of a tsunami 4000km away.
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Welcome to Nashville, "A city waiting to die." when not a 5 but a 7+ smashes it.
Re:About 1% of the energy of the Japanese earthqua (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, that didn't stop anyone from fearmongering and once more tens of thousands were evacuated needlessly - ensuring that hundreds or thousands won't follow evacuation orders when a real tsunami is coming.
And they'd be idiots for ignoring a tsunami warning.
It is about time to stop using logarithmic scales for earthquakes. A 7.7 isn't anywhere near as bad as a 9.0 or a 9.2 that created the tsunamis of Japan iand Indonesia respectively.
It's not the logarithmic nature of the scale that's an issue, but the type of earthquake. A subduction quake causes more water displacement, hence greater tsunami, for a given magnitude. This was not a subduction quake, but a parallel slipping.
if tell them to evacuate hundreds of times because of waves barely reaching the height of an average humans knee. (The 1m height reported is from peak to the lowest point - and the lowest point was 2 feet below normal sealevel.)
I've told you eleventeen trillion times not to exaggerate. I don't believe there's been a tsunami warning since the Japan quake.
The only sane course of action if you're somewhere in the pacific or indian ocean and hear a tsunami warning, is to tell people to go and fuck off. Stop crying wolf!
That's an insanely stupid course of action. You're quite welcome to follow it however.
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There have been 5 tsunami warnings of some description stemming from 5 different earthquakes in the pacific area within the last 30 days alone.
http://ptwc.weather.gov/ [weather.gov]
Re:About 1% of the energy of the Japanese earthqua (Score:5, Informative)
There have been 5 tsunami warnings of some description stemming from 5 different earthquakes in the pacific area within the last 30 days alone.
http://ptwc.weather.gov/ [weather.gov]
Fair enough, but they have not been "fearmongering". Plus it's better to have warnings that don't pan out than no warnings at all.
To quote one of the warnings, for a 7.1 magnitude from Queen Charlottes / Haida Gwai (emphasis added):
Re:About 1% of the energy of the Japanese earthqua (Score:4, Informative)
MEASUREMENTS OR REPORTS OF TSUNAMI WAVE ACTIVITY
REPORTS OF 4FT OSCILLATIONS CONTINUING AT WAILOA HARBOR NEAR HILO
ON THE BIG ISLAND
HILO HAWAII 0.37M / 1.2FT 16MIN
KAWAIHAE HAWAII 0.43M / 1.4FT 08MIN
KAHULUI MAUI 0.76M / 2.5FT 12MIN
HALEIWA HI 0.43M / 1.4FT 10MIN
MAKAPU`U HI 0.41M / 1.3FT 08MIN
CRESCENT CITY CA 0.42M / 1.4FT 24MIN
ARENA COVE CA 0.32M / 1.1FT 06MIN
4 feet is enough to turn your nap on the beach into a bad day.
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Look harder:
I had to edit this down because of slashcode complaints of "junk characters"
MEASUREMENTS OR REPORTS OF TSUNAMI WAVE ACTIVITY
REPORTS OF 4FT OSCILLATIONS CONTINUING AT WAILOA HARBOR NEAR HILO
ON THE BIG ISLAND
4 feet is enough to turn your nap on the beach into a bad day.
I think you're reinforcing my point - don't ignore tsunami warnings, they're not fear mongering, and even for the 7.1 magnitude quake, no one at the warning centre was setting their hair on fire.
Um, look harder?
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The fearmongering comes from the media who don't understand anything more complex than a traffic ticket (or perhaps Brittney Spears on a good day). There was a tsunami alert for about a 100 mile stretch of coastline north and south of the quake which probably affected a thousand people at the very top end.
I'm going to bet that there are newsrooms who have the direct feeds for earthquakes and tsunamis fed into a semi automatic story generator. Get a 7+ quake and it spits out a story to somebody who doesn
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Oh, the media totally understand.
They understand that they have to sensationalize EVERYTHING to maximize their ratings.
Everything is putting you in imminent danger, so you must watch us 24/7/365, so we can warn you and tell you what you need to do to prepare yourself for todays danger.
Something like this just helps the media, as it's perceived to actually be a more real threat [nature!] than other ones they come with.
Other things to worry about:
-ice falling off planes
-children attacking school with guns/kni
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FTFY. It's important to remember what the driving forces are.
It's (probably) not that that the editorial staff are manipulative fuck-tards ; it's that commercial broadcasting systems put manipulative fuck-tards into positions of power in broadcasting organisations.
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People only seem to take notice of the fact that there is an alert issued, not the actual content of it. I suppose part of that is due to the media wanting to hype it up and focus on the fact that something interesting happened, not that it isn't actually very interesting.
It is highly irresponsible really. Japanese media will always deliver the important information when it comes to earthquakes and tsunami. You get alerts on TV and radio about 50cm tsunami quite regularly.
Re:About 1% of the energy of the Japanese earthqua (Score:5, Informative)
There's only one "warning" on that page, the one from last night's earthquake. The others are "information statements" and "information bulletins".
Now, if you want to say that people should not treat every mention of the word "tsunami" as a warning to evacuate, you'd be right. But you said they should ignore the hundreds of "warnings", and there haven't been hundreds of "warnings". There's just been one in the last month. (I think there were others this year, but I can't find a list of all of them.)
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Your "warnings" are information such as "BASED ON ALL AVAILABLE DATA A DESTRUCTIVE PACIFIC-WIDE TSUNAMI IS
NOT EXPECTED"
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I'm not sure what you're getting wound up about. I'm about 200 miles from the epicenter. We didn't get a tsunami warning but they did activate the reverse 911 system to tell people that there WASN'T a warning.
The actual warning area was quite small. The problem (if there is one) is the brain dead 'reporting' that implied that there was some sort of major quake and wave going on. We have these sorts of 'alerts' a couple of times per year and although some people get all wound up, they're the same people
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I was talking about Hawaii.
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I take it you don't live in Hawaii? I do. Was the media overhyping it? Of course. But that doesn't mean there wasn't a real danger. Based on looking at the buoy data and what the pacific tsunami warning center folks were saying, I figured it probably wouldn't be a big deal, but why take the risk? They actually didn't issue the warning until they had actual buoy data, and on the tv and radio they were interviewing the folks at the pacific tsunami warning center as much as possible. We actually did get
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I take it you don't live in an area where tsunamis are a risk? Trust me, those of us who live in areas where such natural disasters are a risk take the warnings seriously every time.
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I happen to live a it further down from the epicenter, on the Oregon Coast. The beach is 7 blocks from my front porch.
No sirens, no reverse-911 calls, nada. I live right on an official evacuation route (my street), and no traffic at all on it.
The only reason I even knew about it last night is from my mother-in-law, who recently moved the to the north WA coast, and is a bit of a drama queen at times... she calls up at 11:30pm local time to breathlessly warn us. Seems the local media up in SeaTac is kinda st
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Driving out on the Sunset Highway a couple months back at about the halfway point from Hillsboro I passed a sign that said something about a "Tsunami Zone." The print was way too small for readability at high speed but I figured this was advertising the fact that I was entering one of Oregon's Tsunami Hazard Awareness Zones [ohs.org], nothing more; but I can well imagine a tourista getting the impression that tidal waves could inundate them tens of miles inland. They should make those signs oversized, like the For
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Yes, fortunately Celine Dion has been residing in Las Vegas for quite some time now. With any luck, she'll stay there.
Earthquake in BC (Score:4, Funny)
God's reaction to that kid's arrest...
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where the hell are you, Houston
Where it's always been - Between Burns Lake and Smithers. Sheesh.
NW Overdue (Score:2)
The northwest is overdue for a big earthquake... 8.5 or greater.
Middle America must be envious (Score:2)
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Don't they also get tornados?
Spy quake, that's what it was (Score:2)
It was caused by the construction of that secret RCMP underground command base for spying on everyone. It was their fault.
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It was caused by the construction of that secret RCMP underground command base for spying on everyone. It was their fault.
You wil find Bush's Fault running through the epicenter.
It's All Right, Everyone (Score:5, Funny)
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...though on the other hand:
The Boston Molasses Disaster [wikipedia.org]
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If you cannot do simple addition or subtraction (depending on where you live), you need more than a computer program.
Seismologists better go into hiding (Score:2)
After the precedent established in Italy, any seismologists who failed to predict this quake had better pack some bags.
No damage from the quake? (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry! (Score:2)
7.7 Magnitude Quake Hits British Columbia [slashdot.org]Posted by samzenpus on Sunday October 28, @05:40AM
Sorry! Sorry! We didn't realize you were an EFF supporter, God! We'll retract the bill, you just...stop...the earthquakes...
No damage because it occured up north (Score:2)
In the lower mainland, I have not seen any reports of it being felt. Same with most of vancouver island. It was up by prince rupert and haidia gwaii. So for the most part, that area is sparsely populated. The closest major city would be prince rupert with a pop of 12,508.
If this had occurred 500 km south, we would have had some major damage. Judging by this cbc article of eyewitness reports:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/10/28/bc-earthquake-witnesses.html [www.cbc.ca]
But there is actually anot