Continue reading »]]> A strong earthquake struck the island nation of Vanuatu on Wednesday, the U. S. Geological Survey said.

The 6.0-magnitude quake, with a depth of 41 kilometers (26 miles), struck 75 kilometers (45 miles) west-northwest of the capital, Port Vila.

It was the second day in a row that a powerful earthquake hit the region, following Tuesday’s 7.5-magnitude quake.

No tsunami warning was issued.

Vanuatu is in the South Pacific Ocean, about three-quarters of the way from Hawaii to Australia, and is made of numerous islands.

source

Continue reading »]]> One of the world’s most powerful earthquakes in a century battered Chile on Saturday, killing at least 214 people as it toppled buildings and triggered tsunamis that ravaged a port town and threatened Pacific coastlines as far away as Japan.

Buildings caught fire, others crumbled and bridges collapsed across swathes of central Chile, but the initial death toll was relatively low from a quake packing many times more power than the one that devastated Haiti last month.

An apartment block with up to 200 people inside collapsed in Concepcion, the closest major city to the epicenter, and rescue officials said they were unsure how many escaped.

Overturned cars lay scattered below a fallen overpass in the capital Santiago and telephone and power lines went down across the narrow country, making it difficult to assess the full extent of the damage and loss of life.

The government said at least 214 people were killed in the 8.8-magnitude quake, which struck at 3:34 a.m. (0634 GMT), sending people rushing from their beds and onto the streets in fear, hugging each other and crying.

"It came in waves and lasted so long. Three minutes is an eternity. We kept worrying that it was getting stronger, like a terrifying Hollywood movie," said Santiago housewife Dolores Cuevas.

Chilean officials said the number of deaths was unlikely to increase dramatically, and a U.S. Geological Survey researcher attributed the low toll to Chile’s solid building standards.

But it was the fifth-largest earthquake since 1900 and dealt a blow to the economy and infrastructure of the world’s No. 1 copper producer and one of Latin America’s most developed and stable countries. [ID:nN27181062] [ID:nN27183634]

"This will be a major blow to the country’s infrastructure; there has been major damage to roads, airports, which are now suspended, ports and also in housing," Chilean President-elect Sebastian Pinera said.

The quake halted operations at two oil refineries and two major copper mines [ID:nN27177467] and the government said an estimated half a million homes were severely damaged.

TSUNAMI

A tsunami swept into the port town of Talcahuano, causing serious damage to port facilities and lifting fishing boats out of the water. Television pictures showed shipping containers strewn around and flooded streets in the port, one of the most important in southern Chile.

President Michelle Bachelet said a huge wave hit the Juan Fernandez islands, an archipelago where Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk was marooned in the 18th century, inspiring the novel Robinson Crusoe.

"There was a series of waves that got bigger and bigger, which gave people time to save themselves," pilot Fernando Avaria told TVN television by telephone from the main island.

But at least four people were killed and 13 others were missing on the island, a local official said.

Fifteen hours after the quake struck Chile, the tsunami reached Hawaii’s Big Island, where residents and tourists were evacuated from low-lying coastal areas. The tsunami warning was later lifted for Hawaii, but Japanese officials said a wave up to 3 meters (10 feet) high could hit the country’s Pacific coast and warned residents to evacuate coastal areas.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake struck 70 miles (115 km) northeast of Concepcion at a depth of 22 miles (35 km). It said an earthquake of magnitude 8 or over can cause "tremendous damage." The Jan. 12 quake that devastated Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince and killed well over 200,000 people was measured as magnitude 7.0.

CAPITAL DAMAGED, MINES SHUT

Chile’s capital of Santiago, about 200 miles (320 km) north of the epicenter, was also badly hit. The international airport was closed for at least 24 hours as the quake destroyed passenger walkways and shook glass out of doors and windows.

Codelco, the world’s largest copper producer, suspended operations at its El Teniente and Andina mines, but reported no major damage and said it expected the mines to be up and running in the "coming hours."

Production was halted at the Los Bronces and El Soldado copper mines, owned by Anglo American Plc, but Chile’s biggest copper mine, Escondida, was operating normally.

Chile produces about 34 percent of world supply of copper, which is used in electronics, cars and refrigerators.

In Concepcion, one of Chile’s largest cities with around 670,000 inhabitants, at least 12 buildings caught fire and rescue workers pulled 22 people from the rubble of the 15-storey apartment block that pancaked into itself.

Some residents looted pharmacies and a collapsed grains silo, hauling off bags of wheat, television images showed.

At least 269 prisoners took advantage of the quake to escape from a prison about 250 miles (450 km) south of Santiago, police said. Twenty-eight of the inmates were captured and three shot.

Broken glass and chunks of concrete and brick were strewn across roads and several strong aftershocks rattled jittery residents in the hours after the initial quake.

"It was like we were being shaken around in a box," said Claudia Rosario, a 27-year-old receptionist in Temuco, 175 miles (280 km) south of Concepcion. She said residents there were without water and electricity.

An eight-year-old boy and a man were killed in the northern Argentine city of Salta when a powerful aftershock caused walls to collapse, officials said.

There were blackouts in parts of Santiago. Emergency officials said buildings in the historic quarters of two southern cities, mainly made of adobe, had been badly damaged and local radio said three hospitals had partially collapsed.

In 1960, Chile was hit by a 9.5-magnitude earthquake, one of the biggest ever recorded. It devastated the city of Valdivia, killed 1,655 people and spawned a tsunami that engulfed the Pacific Ocean, taking another 200 lives in Japan, Hawaii and the Philippines.

President Barack Obama called Bachelet on Saturday and said the United States stood ready to help Chile. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was due to visit Chile on Tuesday on a Latin America tour. (Additional reporting by Helen Popper, Kevin Gray, Guido Nejamkis and Juliana Castilla in Buenos Aires; Alonso Soto in Santiago; Editing by Stuart Grudgings and Kieran Murray)

source: Reuters

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Vehicles that were driving along a highway that collapsed during the earthquake near Santiago are seen overturned on the asphalt Saturday Feb. 27, 1010 after an 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck central Chile early Saturday. The quake hit 200 miles (325 kilometers) southwest of the capital and the epicenter was just 70 miles (115 kilometers) from Concepcion, Chile’s second-largest city.

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A tsunami advisory announced shortly after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck Japan’s Ryukyu Islands early Saturday has been canceled, Japan’s Meteorological Agency reported.

There was no tsunami damage "though there may be slight sea level changes from now on," it said, referring to the areas affected by the advisory — the Okinawa Islands, the Amami Islands and the Tokara Islands.

The quake was centered 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) deep and struck at 5:31 a.m. (3:31 p.m. ET Friday) about 85 kilometers (53 miles) from Okinawa.

The quake was felt on Okinawa, with shaking that lasted about 15 seconds, said Lt. Col. Daniel King of the U.S. Pacific Command. He told CNN that commanders in Japan and Hawaii were trying to get damage and casualty reports from U.S. military stations on Okinawa, but had heard nothing in the immediate aftermath.

About 20,000 U.S. troops — mostly Marines, along with Navy and Air Force personnel — are stationed on eight bases on Okinawa, he said.

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A massive magnitude 8.8 earthquake rocked Chile early Saturday, killing at least 78 people and triggering tsunami warnings for the entire Pacific basin.

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet said she expected the death toll to rise.

Numerous aftershocks — including one of magnitude 6.9 — were felt within hours of the initial quake, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The quake’s epicenter was located off the coast of Maule, about 200 miles southwest of the capital of Santiago. It struck at 3:34 a.m. (1:34 a.m. ET), when most people were sleeping.

source

Continue reading »]]> A powerful earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.9 rocked Japan’s southern islands, injuring two and prompting fears of a tsunami.

There were no reports of serious damage from the quake, believed to be the strongest in a century to hit Japan’s southern Okinawa Island. Japan’s Kyodo news agency said two people were hurt, but there were no reports of any deaths.

The Meteorological Agency says the quake occurred off the coast of the island of Okinawa at a depth of 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) at 5:31 a.m. Saturday (2031 GMT Friday).

The Meteorological Agency had initially predicted a tsunami up to 6 feet (2 meters) near the Okinawan coast and warned nearby residents to stay away from the coastline. The agency lifted the warning within two hours.

Continue reading »]]> A powerful 7.1 magnitude earthquake shook Honduras in the early hours of Thursday, killing a teenage boy as it knocked down homes and briefly sparking a tsunami alert for Central America’s Caribbean coast.

The quake struck off Honduras’ northeast coast near the scuba-diving resort island of Roatan and damaged buildings across the north of the largely impoverished country of some 7 million people.

Emergency services officials said a 15-year-old boy died in the town of La Lima, about 100 miles north of the capital Tegucigalpa, when the ceiling of his house collapsed.

Honduras has few high-rise buildings but several places reported collapsed homes and damaged churches.

The earthquake struck at 2:24 a.m. local time (4:24 a.m. EDT) when most people were asleep.

Security guard Pedro Ramirez, 52, was in his truck outside an office building in Tegucigalpa when the tremor hit.

“I felt the car rock and I started to hear little bits of debris from the building next door hitting the roof,” he said. “It was frightening because it was shaking a lot. I’ve never felt anything like it.”

The earthquake hit 39 miles northeast of Roatan, the biggest of the country’s three picturesque Bay Islands where snorkelers and divers come to see dolphins and a big coral reef. It had a shallow depth of 6.2 miles.

A 7.1 magnitude quake can cause serious damage over a wide area. Thursday’s tremor followed two moderate quakes in nearby Mexico in the past few weeks.

On Roatan, rescue officials said the quake had knocked out power and caused minor damage to buildings. People were outside their houses and being urged to keep away from the shore.

A tsunami watch was issued for Honduras, Guatemala and Belize, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said, but it was lifted about an hour later.

In the town of Santa Barbara, in northwest Honduras, a handful of houses collapsed and the ceiling of an old colonial church fell in. The tremor sent people running into the street and the power was cut in some areas, Honduran radio said.

Houses also fell down in the port of Puerto Cortes while fires broke out in the northern business city of San Pedro Sula. A bridge collapsed in the city of El Progreso and televisions crashed to the floor in homes in La Lima, officials said.

The quake was initially reported having a 7.4 magnitude.

Honduras has a limited tourist industry with most visitors attracted to its Bay islands off the world’s second-largest coral reef that teems with fish, sponges, rays and turtles.

Major quake off Honduras kills one, damages homes

Continue reading »]]> The death toll from the Abruzzo earthquake reached 228 last night as a series of strong aftershocks continued to rattle through the region.

A tremor of 5.6 magnitude spread more panic yesterday evening in L’Aquila, a city once home to about 70,000 people, where the impact was felt the strongest. At least one person was reported killed as a result of the shock. Monday’s earthquake was between 5.8 to 6.3 magnitude.

All day, aftershocks hampered the rescue effort as relatives of the missing waited for news of their loved ones.

At one point rescuers looking for more bodies in a collapsed student dormitory in L’Aquila had to run from the rubble as one of the bigger aftershocks hit shortly before midday.

Ollie Hodge, 29, a rugby player from Bristol, who signed up to play for L’Aquila last year, told of his horror as he woke up in the middle of the earthquake, which also killed a teammate.

“Myself and a few of the boys from the club went out to the hospital to help. We were carrying beds down the stairs and carrying people out. You just do what you can in a situation like that. It still hasn’t sunk in yet. The scenes in the centre of town were unreal — it’s like a war zone down there. Absolutely horrendous.”

By yesterday afternoon rescue workers had all but given up hope of pulling any more survivors from the wreckage, and the men in hard hats and harnesses were looking for corpses rather than miracles.

The quake had ripped the student dormitory in two, leaving an ugly crevasse of twisted metal and crumpled air vents. In the afternoon four people were finally located but tearful emergency workers declined to say whether they were alive or dead.

In some areas of the city, rescuers were digging by hand to find any survivors. Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister, said that the efforts would continue for two more days “until it is certain that there is no one else alive”.

Tent camps provided by civil protection volunteers housed some of the 17,000 left homeless by the quake, but many spent the night in the chill mountain air without blankets.

David de Angeli stood outside one of the tents, cradling a bandaged hand. He described how he had escaped from his house as the wreckage rained down, scooping up a neighbour’s ten-year-old daughter and fleeing into the street. “I still haven’t heard from my son or my grandson,” he said, bursting into tears and walking away.

Aerial footage showed the scale of the destruction in this city of Romanesque, Gothic, Baroque and Renaissance architectural treasures. Roofs were missing from modern buildings, old churches had fallen and the walls and other parts of medieval buildings had tumbled to the ground. Officials said that 10,000 to 15,000 buildings were either damaged or destroyed.

Earthquake experts and the Italian media praised the rescue effort and said that the Government had responded well to the catastrophe. But, they said, the real disaster was the country’s continuing failure to take measures to limit earthquake damage and prevent deaths.

“This time the State was there for us,” said La Stampa. It added: “It is unpleasant to reflect on a catastrophe when there are still people to pull out of the rubble, but we have to do so if we are to avoid yet more pain and rage. It is not earthquakes which kill, but badly constructed buildings.”

Franco Barberi, a geologist, said in a television broadcast from a camp for evacuees at L’Aquila that “an earthquake like this in California would not have provoked a single death”.

Scale of the disaster

• 228 confirmed dead
• 17 bodies still unidentified
• 15 missing
• 50,000 estimated homeless
• 13,000 estimated number of buildings damaged or destroyed

Italian earthquake: deathtoll reaches 228 as aftershock slows rescue

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A powerful earthquake in mountainous central Italy knocked down whole blocks of buildings early Monday as residents slept, killing more than 150 people in the country’s deadliest quake in nearly three decades. Tens of thousands were homeless and 1,500 were injured.

Premier Silvio Berlusconi, speaking by telephone with one of the TV networks of his media empire, said more than 150 people were dead and more than 1,500 people injured in the quake, which struck near the medieval town of L’Aquila, nestled in the Apennine mountains, before dawn.

The quake felled whole blocks of buildings in L’Aquila and the surrounding area early Monday as residents slept.

Ambulances screamed through L’Aquila as firefighters with dogs and a crane worked feverishly to reach people trapped in fallen buildings, including a university dormitory where a half dozen students were believed still inside.

As midnight approached, rescuers pulled a scared-looking dog with a bleeding paw out of the dormitory rubble. Relatives and friends of the missing stood wrapped in blankets or huddled under umbrellas in the rain as rescuers pulled out pieces of what seemed like an armoire, a smashed chair, photographs, wallets and diaries but none of the young people for whom they were searching.

The relatives, sobbing or grim-faced, refused to talk to reporters.

But elsewhere in L’Aquila, firefighters reported pulling a 21-year-old woman and a 22-year-man, both of them Italian, from what was an apartment building where many students rented flats. The building’s five stories had pancaked into one slab or concrete.

Outside the half-collapsed building, part of the University of L’Aquila, tearful young people huddled together, some in their slippers, after being roused from sleep by the quake. Dozens managed to escape as the dorm walls fell around them but hours after the quake, a body of a male student was pulled from the rubble.

“We managed to come down with other students but we had to sneak through a hole in the stairs as the whole floor came down,” said student Luigi Alfonsi, 22. “I was in bed — it was like it would never end as I heard pieces of the building collapse around me.”

“There was water gushing out of broken water pipes, and the corridor which led to the stairs was partially blocked when a piece of the wall came down,” Alfonsi, his eyes filling with tears and his hands trembling, told The Associated Press.

Some 10,000 to 15,000 buildings were either damaged or destroyed, officials said. L’Aquila Mayor Massimo Cialente said about 100,000 people were homeless. It was not clear if the mayor’s estimate included surrounding towns.

The quake also took a severe toll on the city’s prized architectural heritage. L’Aquila was built as a mountain stronghold during the Middle Ages and has many Romanesque, Gothic and Renaissance buildings.

Damage to monuments was reported as far away as Rome, where cracks appeared at the thermal baths built in the 3rd century by the emperor Caracalla, Culture Ministry official Giuseppe Proietti said. The damage was not serious, and other Roman monuments suffered no consequences, he said.

Parts of many of the ancient churches and castles in and around L’Aquila have collapsed. Centuries-old churches in many isolated villages in the area are believed partly collapsed, and damage to ancient monuments has been reported as far as Rome.

L’Aquila, capital of the Abruzzo region, was near the epicenter about 70 miles (110 kilometers) northeast of Rome. It is a quake-prone region that has had at least nine smaller jolts since the beginning of April. The quake struck at 3:32 a.m. The U.S. Geological Survey said the big quake was magnitude 6.3, but Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics put it at 5.8. More than a dozen aftershocks followed.

Italy’s national police chief Antonio Manganelli said several people had been arrested for looting. He said those picked up were “caught while they were stealing from abandoned houses. It’s sad.”

The quake hit 26 towns and cities around L’Aquila, which lies in a valley surrounded by the Apennine mountains. Castelnuovo, a hamlet of about 300 people 15 miles (25 kilometers) southeast of L’Aquila, appeared hard hit, and five people were confirmed dead there. Another small town, Onno, was almost leveled.

“A few houses have remained standing, but just a few,” Stefania Pezzopane, provincial president of L’Aquila, told Corriere della Sera. Rescue workers in Onna, a different small town, with a population of about 250, said the town was virtually deserted as survivors sought shelter elsewhere.

The four-star, 133-room Hotel Duca degli Abruzzi in L’Aquila’s historic center was heavily damaged but still standing and it was not known if there were any casualties, said Ornella De Luca of the national civil protection agency in Rome. “The information is very fragmentary,” she said.

Premier Silvio Berlusconi declared a state of emergency, freeing up federal funds to deal with the disaster, and canceled a visit to Russia so he could deal with the crisis.

Condolences poured in from around the world, including from President Barack Obama, Pope Benedict XVI and Abdullah Gul, president of quake-prone Turkey.

Slabs of walls, twisted steel supports, furniture and wire fences were strewn about the streets of L’Aquila, and gray dust carpeted sidewalks, cars and residents.

Residents and rescue workers hauled away debris from collapsed buildings by hand or in an assembly lines, passing buckets. Firefighters pulled a woman covered in dust from the debris of her four-story home. Rescue crews demanded quiet as they listened for signs of life from other people believed still trapped inside.

Elsewhere, a man dressed only in his underwear wept as he was pulled from the debris and embraced.

A body lay on the sidewalk, covered by a white sheet.

Parts of L’Aquila’s main hospital were evacuated because they were at risk of collapse, and only two operating rooms were in use. Bloodied victims waited in hospital hallways or in the courtyard and many were being treated in the open. A field hospital was being set up.

In the dusty streets, as aftershocks rumbled through, residents hugged one another, prayed quietly or frantically tried to call relatives. Residents covered in dust pushed carts full of clothes and blankets that they had thrown together before fleeing their homes.

“We left as soon as we felt the first tremors,” said Antonio D’Ostilio, 22, as he stood on a street in L’Aquila with a huge suitcase piled with clothes. “We woke up all of a sudden and we immediately ran downstairs in our pajamas.”

Evacuees converged on an athletics field on the outskirts of L’Aquila where a makeshift tent camp was being set up. Civil protection officials distributed bread and water to people who lay on the grass next to heaps of their belongings.

“It’s a catastrophe and an immense shock,” said resident Renato Di Stefano, who was moving with his family to the camp as a precaution. “It’s struck in the heart of the city, we will never forget the pain.”

The Culture Ministry said a wall of the 13th century Santa Maria di Collemaggio church collapsed and the bell tower of the Renaissance San Bernadino church also fell. The 16th century castle housing the Abruzzo National Museum was damaged.

This was Italy’s deadliest quake since Nov. 23, 1980, when one measuring 6.9-magnitude hit southern regions, leveling villages and causing some 3,000 deaths.

Many modern structures in Italy over recent decades have failed to hold up to the rigors of quakes along Italy’s mountainous spine, or in coastal cities like Naples. Despite warnings by geologists and architects, some of these buildings have not been retrofitted for seismic safety.

Pezzopane, the provincial president, said residents may have been lulled into complacency because so many smaller quakes had jolted the area, including two or three earlier in the night.

“Considering what happened, a bit more concern, more attention might have saved lives,” she said.

National officials insisted no quake can ever be predicted and that no evacuation could have been ordered on the basis of the recent jolts.

“There is no possibility of making any predictions on earthquakes. This is a fact in the world’s scientific community,” Civil protection chief Guido Bertolaso told reporters.

The last major quake to hit central Italy was a 5.4-magnitude temblor that struck the south-central Molise region on Oct. 31, 2002, killing 28 people, including 27 children who died when their school collapsed.

Over 150 dead, 1,500 injured in Italy quake