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The 2010 Chile earthquake happened off the coast of the Maule Region of Chile, on February 27, 2010, with a magnitude of what was originally reported to be between 8.3 and 8.5 magnitude, and has since been upgraded to a possible 8.8 magnitude. It was the strongest earthquake affecting Chile since the magnitude 9.5 1960 Valdivia earthquake, and the strongest earthquake worldwide since the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake.

The 8.8 magnitude of the 2010 Chilean quake may also be compared with the 7.0 magnitude of the 2010 Haiti Earthquake.

The earthquake was also felt in the Chilean capital Santiago as well as in many Argentinean cities.

Its epicenter was offshore from the Maule Region, approximately 8 km (5.0 miles) west of Curanipe and 115 km north-northeast of Chile’s second largest city, Concepción. Other cities exposed to Mercalli intensity scale intensity VIII (Destructive) shaking were Arauco, Lota and Constitución. The quake occurred at 03:34 local time, and is reported to have lasted 10–30 seconds.

Michelle Bachelet, President of Chile, has declared a “state of catastrophe”. Warnings were issued in 53 countries.

Other Information

• Date : 27 February 2010 06:34:17 UTC (2010-02-27T06:34:17)
• Magnitude : 8.8
• Depth : 35 kilometres (22 mi)
• Epicenter location : Coordinates: 35°50′46″S 72°43′08″W / 35.846°S 72.719°W / -35.846; -72.719
• Countries or regions affected : Chile, Maule Region, Biobío Region
• Casualties : 78 deaths reported

News

• Highway Collapsed : 2010 Chile Earthquake
• Tsunami advisory canceled after 7.0 earthquake off Okinawa
• Pacific under tsunami threat after massive 8.8 quake strikes Chile
• Magnitude 6.9 earthquake shakes southern Japan, tsunami warning issued

Links

• Wikipedia

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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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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

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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

Continue reading »]]> A 7.9 magnitude quake about 209km (130 miles) south-east of Tonga triggered a tsunami in the South Pacific, but there were no immediate reports of damage.

A regional tsunami warning was issued, but withdrawn just over an hour and a half later.

The US Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) had said high waves were likely to hit Tonga, Samoa and other islands around the region.

The quake hit at 0618 local time (1818 GMT) at a depth of 10km (6.2 miles).

“It may have been destructive along coastlines of the region near the earthquake epicentre,” the centre said.

There were no immediate indications of any damage or casualties on Tonga’s main island, Tongan police said in the capital, Nuku’alofa.

US monitors advised that some coastal areas of Hawaii could see a rise in sea level and strong currents lasting up to several hours but said no destructive impact was expected.

‘People laughing’

Tonga resident Pesi Fonua told the Associated Press the quake had lasted for “something like 20 seconds” but he had seen no damage.

Police spokesman Niua Kama told the agency residents did not appear to take the warning seriously.

“People are out on the roads, laughing at the warning,” he said.

They were not moving back from the coast despite tsunami warnings, the spokesman added.

Mary Fonua, a resident of the Tongan capital Nuku’alofa, described experiencing “a lot of rattling and shaking”.

“It went on for about 30 seconds, and I went outside and the house was shaking for about another 30 seconds,” she told AFP.

The epicentre is 480km (300 miles) south-east of Fiji’s Ndoi Island and 1,830km (1,140 miles) north-east of Auckland, New Zealand.

The island state of Tonga is a developing tourist destination.

Tsunami after South Pacific quake

Continue reading »]]> Indonesia issued a tsunami warning after an earthquake struck southeast of Melonguane in North Sulawesi, a telephone text message from the country’s meteorology agency said on Thursday.

The U.S. Geographical Survey said the 7.5 magnitude quake had struck in the Talaud Islands of Indonesia, 323.5 km (201 miles) south-southeast of General Santos, on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines.

The U.S. Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said no destructive widespread tsunami threat existed. But the agency added that eathquakes of this size sometimes generate local tsunamis that could be destructive along coasts located within 100 km of the quake epicenter.

Indonesia issues tsunami alert after Sulawesi quake | Reuters

Continue reading »]]> A 5.6 magnitude earthquake struck Batanes province Friday, the US Geological Survey said, but there were no reports of casualties or damage.

The shallow undersea quake struck at 8:28 pm (1228 GMT) around 108 kilometers (67 miles) northwest of Basco, the capital of the Batan Islands, which lie in the Luzon Strait between the Philippines and Taiwan, the USGS said.

The quake had a depth of 10 kilometers, it said.

The Philippines, a nation made up of more than 7,000 islands, sits on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” where continental plates collide, causing frequent seismic and volcanic activity.

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Continue reading »]]> ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – A moderate 5.7-magnitude earthquake shook Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city, on Saturday morning.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake’s epicenter was 161 miles southwest of Anchorage. There was no tsunami warning in effect, according to the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center website.

Magnitude 5 quakes can cause considerable damage, but there were no immediate reports of injury or damage.

Reuters

Continue reading »]]> The number of people killed from an earthquake in Costa Rica rose to 34 on Saturday, a government official said.

Another 64 people were listed as missing two days after the 6.1-magnitude earthquake shook north-central Costa Rica, the official said.

Emergency personnel continued to search for victims affected by the quake, according to Ministry of Infrastructure spokeswoman Silvia Chaves.

Rescuers reached 200 tourists who had been stranded in a hotel in Varablanca, and they were taken to safety, she said.

Survivors described Thursday’s quake, which was centered about 20 miles north-northwest of the capital city of San Jose, as sudden and brutal. Landslides, tumbling rocks and collapsed buildings caused widespread devastation.

“I saw how the Earth moved and how it took my family — my aunt, my cousin and her babies,” Miguel Angel Marin told CNN affiliate Teletica TV. “It was very hard because I wanted to save them but I couldn’t.”

On Friday, the U.S. government dispatched a team of 34 U.S. military personnel and four helicopters from Honduras-based Joint Task Force-Bravo to Costa Rica to assist.

More than 1,200 people were stranded, without a way to get out of towns or homes, Red Cross official Milton Chaverri said. Another 1,000 people were living in shelters, he said. iReport.com: Are you there? Send photos, video

The remote area near Alajuela, where the quake hit strongest, is difficult to reach, and officials said they were having to rely on helicopters for medical evacuations and to airlift supplies.

Randall Picado, a government rescue official, said many residents were without water and other necessities.

About 400 volunteers and Red Cross personnel were giving aid in 15 communities, Chaverri said.

The temblor was felt throughout Costa Rica and in southern and central Nicaragua, the U.S. Geological Survey reported on its Web site.

About 2,000 aftershocks have been felt in San Jose, the capital, and other cities throughout the nation, Red Cross spokeswoman Vilca said.

The Geological Survey placed the earthquake’s epicenter at 20 miles (32 kilometers) north-northwest of San Jose at a depth of 2.8 miles (4.5 kilometers).

34 dead, dozens missing from Costa Rica quake – CNN.com