Free Republic

TOKYO (AP) — A powerful earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.4 struck southern Japan on Thursday evening, collapsing walls and a number of houses. There are no immediate reports of casualties.

Note: Other earthquakes in the area today: 6.9/6.7 6.9 two days ago Seismotectonics of the Eastern Margin of the Australia Plate The eastern margin of the Australia plate is one of the most sesimically active areas of the world due to high rates of convergence between the Australia and Pacific plates. In the region of New Zealand, the 3000 km long Australia-Pacific plate boundary extends from south of Macquarie Island to the southern Kermadec Island chain. It includes an oceanic transform (the Macquarie Ridge), two oppositely verging subduction zones (Puysegur and Hikurangi), and a transpressive continental transform, the Alpine Fault...

More at link Developing

spate of major earthquakes on small faults could overturn traditional views about how earthquakes start, according to a study from researchers at the Centro de Investigación Científica y de Educación Superior in Ensenada, Mexico, and the University of California, Davis. In the past 25 years, many of California’s biggest earthquakes struck on small faults, away from the San Andreas Fault plate boundary. These events include the Landers, Hector Mine and Napa earthquakes. Several of the quakes were unexpected, rattling areas thought seismically quiet. A closer look at one of the surprise events, the magnitude-7.2 El Mayor-Cucapah earthquake, showed that small...

George Kennedy, star of "Cool Hand Luke" and the 'Naked Gun' movies, has died at the age of 91 ... TMZ has learned. George's grandson Cory Schenkel says Kennedy died Sunday morning at 4:30 AM in Boise, ID. He says his grandfather had been in failing health ever since his wife Joan died a little over a year ago. George had been under hospice care for the past month. Kennedy won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1968 for "Cool Hand Luke." He also starred in all 3 of the 'Naked Gun' flicks, "Airport 1975," "Earthquake" and many many more....

Users who download the app will be sending data to scientists when an earthquake as small as a magnitude 5 hits. By harvesting information from hundreds of phones closest to the earthquake, scientists will be able to test a computer system that could, in the future, dispatch early warnings that shaking is seconds or minutes away to people farther away from the earthquake’s origin. For instance, if a quake started in San Bernardino, cell phones there could register the quake and quickly help send warnings to smartphone users in Los Angeles. "This is a citizen science project," said Richard Allen,...

At 11:04. Anyone else feel it?

By Monica Crowley - The Washington Times - Wednesday, February 10, 2016 New Hampshire has a way of dishing out political reversals of fortune, and this week proved the Granite State hasn’t lost its touch. This time, however, it was the Republican establishment that incurred its wrath. The voters are in open revolt. The New Hampshire primary involved high stakes for the Iowa victors, Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and Marco Rubio. But it was New Hampshire’s unsentimental humbling of the establishment candidates — Gov. John Kasich excepted — that is the story, along with the big win by the ultimate...

Clusters of tiny earthquakes that happen every three years could help to signal when the next big one will hit Japan, researchers report in Science1. Small, subtle quakes happen in many places where a slab of sea floor dives beneath a continent, such as in the US Pacific Northwest or off the coast of Chile. But the study of seismic activity in Japan is the first to show that they happen in regular episodes, and that those events can precede larger earthquakes. If the same patterns hold in other earthquake-prone regions, they could improve seismic risk estimates there, too. Related...

Three people were arrested Tuesday, Xiao Bo-ren, the Tainan government's legal affairs secretary, told CNN. All are former executives of the real estate development company that built Tainan's 17-story Weiguan Golden Dragon tower, which collapsed when the magnitude-6.4 tremor hit early Saturday. Lin Ming-hui, former chairman of the now defunct Weiguan company, and two other former executives -- Chang Kui-an and Cheng Chin-kui -- face charges of professional negligence resulting in death. The ruins of the toppled high-rise are the most visible evidence of the massive quake, which killed at least 40 people in the normally quiet city of 1.9...

In Japan and areas like the Pacific Northwest where megathrust earthquakes are common, scientists may be able to better forecast large quakes based on periodic increases and decreases in the rate of slow, quiet slipping along the fault. This hope comes from a new study by Japanese and UC Berkeley seismologists, looking at the more than 1,000-kilimeter-long fault off northeast Japan where the devastating 2011 Tohoku-oki earthquake originated, generating a tsunami that killed thousands. There, the Pacific Plate is trundling under the Japan plate, not only causing megaquakes like the magnitude 9 in 2011, but giving rise to a chain...

Hundreds of people are feared trapped in collapsed buildings after a 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck Taiwan. 'Multiple' buildings - including at least one residential block - are said to have fallen following the quake which shook the island at about 4am on Saturday. Reports emerging suggest Tainan, on the south-west coast, was the worst affected, with pictures of buildings partially or completely destroyed circulating on social media, while video footage shows rescue workers wading through water after the mains burst.

Spurred by renewed fears of the fabled “Big One” shattering the West Coast, the Obama administration on Tuesday promoted stronger earthquake-preparedness efforts as part of a first-of-its-kind White House summit. Private foundation grants will fund new research at universities in California and Washington state, the Forest Service will streamline the placement of seismic monitoring stations and a presidential order will tighten standards for new federal buildings.

The January 30, 2016 M 7.2 earthquake beneath the Kamchatka Peninsula of Russia occurred as the result of oblique-normal faulting at a depth of 180 km. At the location of this earthquake, the Pacific plate is moving towards the west-northwest with respect to the North America and Eurasia plates at a rate of approximately 77 mm/yr. Note that some authors divide this region into several microplates that together define the relative motions between the larger Pacific, North America and Eurasia plates; these include the Okhotsk and Amur microplates that are respectively part of North America and Eurasia. The depth and...

A large (and rather deep) M7.2 earthquake has struck the Northwest Pacific in the Russian Kamchatka / Kuril islands region located North of Japan, West of Alaska. Originally began as M7.3, now revised down by 0.1 . large m7.3 earthquake jan 29 2016

When a devastating earthquake leveled Haiti in 2010, millions of people donated to the American Red Cross. The charity raised almost half a billion dollars. It was one of its most successful fundraising efforts ever. The American Red Cross vowed to help Haitians rebuild, but after five years the Red Cross' legacy in Haiti is not new roads, or schools, or hundreds of new homes. It's difficult to know where all the money went. NPR and ProPublica went in search of the nearly $500 million and found a string of poorly managed projects, questionable spending and dubious claims of success,...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – A magnitude-7.1 earthquake knocked items off shelves and walls in Alaska early Sunday morning, jolting the nerves of residents in this earthquake-prone region. But there were no reports of injuries. Alaska's state seismologist, Michael West, called it the strongest earthquake in the state's south-central region in decades. Alaska often has larger or more powerful earthquakes, such as a 7.9 last year in the remote Aleutian Islands.

Magnitude 7.1 earthquake felt throughout Southcentral Alaska Alaska Dispatch News January 24, 2016 Email -A+A Southcentral Alaska was rocked by a strong and prolonged magnitude-7.1 earthquake early Sunday morning. The quake struck 86 miles west-southwest of Anchor Point at 1:30 a.m. Alaska time, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The USGS initially measured the quake at magnitude 6.4, but upgraded it to 7.1 shortly after. The Alaska Earthquake Center said it hit about 65 miles west of the Kenai Peninsula town of Homer and about 160 miles southwest of Anchorage. According to the National Weather Service, the quake was not...

Just had a 7.1 earthquake hit 176 miles south of Anchorage. Yikes. Wife and I thought the house was going to collapse. Any Alaskan Freepers care to weigh in?

As military helicopters ferry search and rescue teams over the Pacific Northwest, below them are scenes of devastation from a giant earthquake that could strike the region at any time. Tsunami waters surge through coastal communities. Buildings, bridges and roads lie in ruins. Fires burn out of control. Survivors are stranded on rooftops, cling to floating debris or are trapped inside wrecked buildings. Seismologists say a full rupture of a 650-mile-long offshore fault running from Northern California to British Columbia and an ensuing tsunami could come in our lifetime, and emergency management officials are busy preparing for the worst. Federal,...