WASHINGTON, Nov 4 (Reuters) - A big earthquake that cracked roads and closed an oil pipeline in rural Alaska has spawned shudders thousands of miles (km) south in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, researchers said on Monday.

More than 200 small earthquakes have been detected throughout the park, the team at the University of Utah Seismograph Stations said.

They were all tiny -- ranging in magnitude from 0 to 2.5, the researchers said. A few were felt by rangers, they said in a statement.

This "confirms what we are beginning to see worldwide -- that earthquakes can be triggered by other earthquakes at great distances, more so than we had though before," Robert Smith, a University of Utah professor of geology and geophysics, said in a statement.

"While the data are preliminary, they suggest that the Yellowstone earthquakes may have been triggered by the passage of large seismic waves generated by the Alaskan earthquake almost 2,000 miles (more than 3,200 kilometers) from the park,"

"Scientists once believed that an earthquake at one location could not trigger earthquakes at distant sites. But that belief was shattered in 1992 when the magnitude 7.3 Landers earthquake in California's Mojave Desert triggered a swarm of quakes more than 800 miles (125 km) away at Yellowstone, as well as other jolts near Mammoth Lakes, California and Yucca Mountain, Nevada."

I live 30 miles from where the quake was centered. We were 'rockin and rollin' yesterday. We had many items fall off of shelves, car alarms went off from the shaking of the cars. The main highway between Fairbanks and Anchorage had big cracks in it close to the location of the quake and other areas fanning out.

The thing I noticed most was the length of the quake. It seemed to last at least 2 minutes. We have been having aftershocks all night and even this morning.

We had a 6.6 about 3 wks ago in the same spot. This one was huge in comparison.

All in all, there was nobody injured badly, so we should count our blessings. If this size quake had happened in LA or another big city with tall buildings.......well it would not be pretty.

I posted this on another thread (sorry for re-post mods) but it is appropiate here, too.

I'd like to see the pictures of the 5' cracks in the highway between Fairbanks and Anchorage.

I got the below statistics from the pipeline web site.

Was amazed at the lateral and vertical movements designed into the pipeline.

Somewhere else on the pipeline web site it said that the walls of the pipe is 3 3/4" thick.

Earthquake Protection

Earthquake magnitude pipeline system designed to withstand

8.5 Richter Scale (maximum). Range from 5.5 to 8.5, depending on area.

Faults crossed by pipeline

3   - Denali
        McGinnis Glacier
        Donnelly Dome

Predicted limits of lateral movement for above ground pipeline, general

2 ft.
Design values for maximum movement at pipeline crossing of major faults

Denali fault — 20 ft. lateral and 5 ft. vertical displacement

McGinnis Glacier fault — 8 ft. lateral and 6 ft. vertical displacement

Donnelly Dome fault — 3 ft. lateral and 10 ft. vertical displacement

Minor potential fault locations — 2 ft. lateral and 2 ft. vertical

Earthquake Monitoring

Alyeska's Earthquake Monitoring System (EMS) consists of sensing and processing instruments at all pump stations south of Atigun Pass and at the Valdez Terminal. A central processing unit at the Operations Control Center (OCC) is linked to the Pipeline and Terminal operator consoles. The EMS is specifically designed to process strong ground motions, to interpolate or extrapolate estimates of earth quake accelerations between the sensing instruments and to prepare a mile-by-mile report comparing the estimated accelerations along the pipeline with the pipeline seismic design criteria.

DSMAs

The instrumentation at field locations consists of accelerometers mounted on concrete pads which measure strong ground motions in three directions (tri-axial) which are connected to a Digital Strong Motion Accelerograph (DSMA). The DSMA, generally located in the Pump Station control room, processes the signals from the accelerometers in real time and reports alarms and selected data to the central processor at the OCC.

Eathquakes in Yellowstone should be of some concern.
Yellowstone is a Volcanic crater known as a Caldera. These are really bad news. You have a resevoir of gas and magma collecting under the entire area. We are talking about a huge volume over many square miles in the magma chamber.

When Yellowstone blows it will make Mt. Saint Helens look like the average lava flow in Hawaii. A volcanic cloud will engulf the North American continent covering large areas with volcanic ash. There will be global cooling by 5c from all the dust. Think an entire growing season in North America destroyed and disruptions around the world.

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