Earthquake

7.5 Magnitude Earthquake Lifts Parts of Japan Up to 13 Feet.

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Ground displacement on the Noto Peninsula in northwestern Honshu, Japan caused by the Earthquake on January 1, 2024.

Some parts of the peninsula rose up to 4 meters (13 feet), shifting the position of coastlines and leaving some ports dry.

The first day of 2024 brought catastrophe to parts of Japan. At 4:10 p.m. Japan Standard Time (07:10 Universal Time), the land on the Noto Peninsula in northwestern Honshu began to lurch, shaking violently for about 50 seconds. The 7.5 magnitude mainshock was followed by dozens of strong aftershocks in the following minutes, hours, and days.

The earthquake on January 1, 2024, was the strongest to hit Ishikawa Prefecture since 1885 and mainland Japan since the 2011 Tohoku earthquake. Shaking was felt across much of Honshu including Tokyo, located about 300 kilometers southeast of the earthquake’s epicenter. Shaking was most intense in the towns of Suzu, Noto, Wajima, and Anamizu, close to the epicenter on the northern Noto Peninsula.

Damage to infrastructure ignited fires that burned through communities. Heavy snow that fell after the quake complicated emergency response efforts, making it difficult for aid to reach some communities.

Scientific Analysis of the Earthquake

As first responders reacted to the disaster from the ground, several teams of scientists tracked the situation using satellites. The map above shows the amount of ground displacement—the shifting of the land—caused by the earthquake. Red areas were pushed upward and toward the northwest. The scattered dark blue and red areas around the airport and other cleared areas and settlements throughout the peninsula are likely false signals caused by how the shapes of buildings or other features reflect radar signals.

“The surface moved upward as much as 4 meters (13 feet) on some parts of the north coast of the Noto Peninsula,” said Eric Fielding, a geophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “The uplift is large because the fault ruptured close to the surface—at a depth of about 10 kilometers (6 miles). It occurred on a fault with a steep dip angle, and the south side of the fault moved upward—what we call a thrust earthquake.”

Earthquakes occur at a variety of depths. Those that occur between 0 to 70 kilometers are shallow, between 70 and 300 kilometers are intermediate, and between 300 and 700 kilometers are deep. Earthquakes that occur at shallow depths, like this one, tend to be more destructive because the seismic waves generated have less time to lose energy as they travel from the source of a quake to the surface.

Advanced Satellite Data and Coastal Changes

The map is based on data from the Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis (ARIA) team at JPL and the California Institute of Technology’s Seismological Laboratory, a team that develops state-of-the-art deformation measurements, change detection methods, and physical models for use in hazards science and response. The ARIA team used synthetic aperture radar data from the PALSAR-2 sensor on the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s ALOS-2 (Advanced Land Observing Satellite-2) and a pixel offset tracking technique to measure surface displacement in the line-of-sight between the ground and the satellite.

Additional analysis of ALOS-2 observations by scientists from the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan indicates that the earthquake uplifted land along 85 kilometers (52 miles) of coastline. It shifted the location of the coastline roughly 200 meters seaward at Minazuki Bay, one of the areas that saw the most uplift. They also reported a large amount of uplift and new land in Waijma and Nafune.

Goto Hideaki, a geomorphologist from Hiroshima University, with colleagues from the Association for Japanese Geographers, used aerial photographs and satellite data to estimate that the quake exposed a total of 4.4 square kilometers of land along the coasts of the Nota Peninsula.

Satellite image of the coastline around Minazuki Bay, Japan captured by the Operational Land Imager-2 on Landsat 9 on January 10, 2022.

Satellite image of the coastline around Minazuki Bay, Japan captured by the Operational Land Imager on Landsat 8 on January 17, 2024.

Some of the coastline changes around Minazuki Bay are visible in the pair of Landsat images above. The upper image, from the OLI-2 (Operational Land Imager-2) on Landsat 9 was acquired on January 10, 2022, before the earthquake. The lower image, from the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 8 was acquired on January 17, 2024, after the event. The bay hosts two small fishing ports that were left much higher and drier than usual. More than 15 fishing ports in Ishikawa Prefecture reported uplift, according to The Asashi Shimbun.

Satellite data often proves useful for emergency aid organizations assisting with disaster response immediately after an event because it can be used to rapidly locate the most severely damaged areas. Over longer time spans, satellite data can also help authorities make more informed decisions about recovery and rebuilding as they prepare for the possibility of future events.

Here’s Where’s Most At Risk From An Earthquake In The US In 2017

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At least four million Americans are at serious risk of being affected by an earthquake of magnitude 4.0 or greater in 2017, according to the USGS.

The US Geological Survey has released its one‐year Seismic‐Hazard Forecast for the Central and Eastern United States and the good news is, they predict the rate of earthquakes will go down this year.

The now-annual report forecasts where earthquakes are most likely to occur in the centre and western coast areas over the coming year with the most serious hotspots in California, Seattle, Oklahoma, southern Kansas and parts of Colorado and New Mexico.

(Photo: USGS)

 

 

Surprisingly the majority of those affected, around 3.5million, will be from human-caused earthquakes the USGS claims, with the rest at risk from natural occurring quakes.

This means exactly what it sounds like, earthquakes caused by the effects of human activity rather than a natural occurance, the primary cause of which is wastewater from oil and gas drilling operations being injected deep into the ground.

While there may be fewer quakes the report predicts they will be more severe in force, something that happened in 2016.

Oklahoma, where the fracking industry has exploded over the last half-decade, experienced some of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded in the state during 2016, with three recorded over magnitude five.

There is some good news. The organisation projects a drop in earthquakes in comparison to 2016.

USGS’ Mark Petersen claimed the decline could be due to the introduction of regulations limiting the practice by the energy industry.

However, President Trump has previously claimed he plans to remove the restrictions during his administration, giving the companies more freedom to carry out the controversial techniques.

The largest recorded earthquake in US history was a magnitude 9.2 that struck Prince William Sound, Alaska in 1964.

So where should you move if you want to avoid earthquakes?  Florida and North Dakota have, on average, the smallest number a year.

How smartphone warnings could save lives in an earthquake

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An earthquake hits and unleashes devastation – but what if you had a 30 second warning?

While it may not seem like much, it could be enough time to take cover – just 30 seconds could mean the difference between surviving and not surviving. It doesn’t take a large earthquake to threaten lives – or to cause billions in damage.

In recent months, there has been a lot of earthquake news. On Wednesday a 4.8 magnitude earthquake and a series of weaker quakes hit Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. On Monday a powerful 7.4-magnitude earthquake erupted off of El Salvador.

As the Midwest quake shows, you don’t need to be near the infamous San Andreas Fault to experience an earthquake. A whopping 45 states/territories are considered at high to moderate risk for damaging earthquakes.

But there are a number of initiatives that aim to give Americans those critical seconds of advanced warning.

One of the most promising, ShakeAlert, performed well during the recent 6.0-magnitude Napa Valley quake. It gave residents a 10-second advance warning.

An app called QuakeAlert builds on ShakeAlert’s work and aims to give Americans 30 seconds of early warning that a quake is on its way.

Early Warning Labs has partnered with the U.S. government, universities and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) provider ESRI to make the next-gen app a widespread reality.

The company is also developing a physical detection and warning device for the home.

Wisely, QuakeAlert leverages smartphones to get the word out. With an early warning sent directly to phones, teachers, for example, could get their students to undertake safety measures like duck, cover, and hold.

How does it work?

In general, when early warning systems aim detect an earthquake they quickly estimate its projected intensity and issue a warning before the ground shaking kicks into high gear.

Typically, a seismic sensor network detects the ‘P-wave’ energy. P-wave, or primary wave, is the initial energy radiating from an earthquake. The earthquake location, magnitude and direction are then quickly evaluated as well is the estimated extent of ground shaking in specific areas.

The overall objective is to provide a warning before the secondary, or ‘S-wave’ hits. The S-wave is the strongest shaking that unleashes most of the damage.

Current systems issue warnings to key stakeholders, like local and state emergency response officials and those responsible for critical infrastructure. With an early warning, officials can then attempt a mass notification.

Early warnings are important because they can help mitigate damage and prevent casualties.

With sufficient warning, it becomes possible to deploy measures like stopping cars before they enter tunnels or cross bridges. The authorities can also halt trains and prevent planes from landing. It also means that defensive measures for potentially high-risk national infrastructure, like gas lines and nuclear reactors, can be initiated.

The QuakeAlert app focuses on providing a warning directly to anyone in the threat zone.

What is it?

The QuakeAlert team has been building on ShakeAlert’s progress.

ShakeAlert is the result of a partnership between the state of California, the U.S. Geological Survey and CalTech. ShakeAlert leverages a network of approximately 400 ground motion sensors and represents an advance from more conventional detection systems that relied on physical hardware to provide warnings.

QuakeAlert relies on a cloud-based system and sends warnings through the app to the user’s smartphone, rather than the ShakeAlert-style hardware.

The app uses typical smartphone functions like GPS and Wi-Fi to identify location data, as well as accelerometers and gyroscopes for working out movement. The magnetometer on phones can be leveraged to help work out direction.

Smartphones near the epicenter of the quake detect the threat and relay the data to a server. The server then passes along the data to all the phones with the app giving them advanced warning of the incoming tremors.

In a high-risk zone like California, this approach means that more than 16 million smartphones can be harnessed to provide residents with direct warning.

Anyone with the app will be able to receive data from their system.

The company says it will be the first time anyone can be warned that an earthquake is coming by a message on their phone – from a few seconds to minutes before it strikes.

In addition to sending warnings to individual smartphones, QuakeAlert can quickly get the word out in high-density populated spots like stadiums and concert venues. Linked to the speaker system, the app can immediately warn game or concert goers.

Similarly, in a hospital it could be used to instantly warn everyone. It could also be linked to the building’s essential systems, prompting a switch to emergency power.

Testing of the app will continue with users. If it proves successful, it could become freely available to users as soon as next year.

Here’s How New Zealand Survived A 7.1 Magnitude Earthquake With Zero Casualties

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New Zealand just experienced a 7.1 magnitude earthquake that rattled the coast of its North Island on Friday. However, no damages were reported. Quite evidently, an earthquake as high as this one would have severe repercussions and it did trigger a tsunami in the region. However, no harm was done to the people, except a little damage to property.

In New Zealand where earthquakes are common, the Civil Defence authorities hold a practice of having regular drills in order to ensure that the people know how to react in a situation like this.

Pat Seymour, a local council politician in the Gisborne area, informed that the earthquake was quite vigorous, but implementation of quick techniques saved the people.

In Te Araroa, the entire population of 600 left their homes for higher grounds, away from the tides. A lot of people instantly reacted to the sirens that hit the town, alerting them about the earthquake, and immediately left for a safer place along with their families.

Gisborne, the nearest town from the earthquake-prone area has a population of 45,000 people. Yet no one was hurt, leaving a big lesson for the entire world. Almost every nation, regardless of how technically advanced or monetarily sound they are, loses some of its people during quakes. Like when a 7.8-magnitude quake jolted Kathmandu, Nepal, the entire city was covered in rubble:

Homes, buildings and temples had flattened, causing widespread damage across the region, killing more than 1,800 people in Nepal.

Nepal

 

The world could learn a lesson or many from New Zealand’s management of the earthquake.

Used tyres can minimise the earthquake’s impact on buildings

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Waste tyres can be a great environmental concern but a professor at a Japanese university hailing from Assam has developed earthquake resistant techniques using them which he says can be effective and affordable means to minimise impact on buildings.

Nepalese policemen look for survivors in the debris of a building that collapsed in an earthquake in Kathmandu, Nepal ,Sunday, April 26, 2015. Sleeping in the streets and shell-shocked, Nepalese cremated the dead and dug through rubble for the missing Sunday, a day after a massive Himalayan earthquake devastated the region and destroyed homes and infrastructure. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

These techniques can be implemented all over the world, especially in Asia, says Hemanta Hazarika, professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at Kyushu University in Fukuoka.

Hazarika, who is the secretary of a technical committee of International Society of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE) related to Geotechnical Natural Hazards in Asian region, is currently in Nepal as part of a Japanese expert team dispatched to the quake-ravaged country.

He has patented one of the techniques and a prototype construction of tyre-retaining wall is planned in Japan within the next few months to replace a conventional retaining wall, which was completely damaged by last year’s earthquake in Nagano.

“These techniques can preserve the environment, mitigate disaster and reduce cost. Judicious combination of these three factors is very important for innovative construction techniques,” 47-year-old Hazarika told PTI.

As dumped tyres will be used in the construction, these techniques are very affordable in developing countries as they are cost effective as compared to other existing techniques which can only be afforded by rich nations, he says.

Elaborating on the techniques, Hazarika, an alumnus of IIT-Madras, says the first one is related to retaining wall protection from an earthquake.

Tyre chips are used as cushion to prevent damage of waterfront structure during an earthquake.

“The second technique is related to the protection of private houses against earthquake shaking and related phenomenon such as liquefaction. Here also tyre chips or tyre chips mixed with sand or gravel are used. The third technique is about protection of sea wall and river embankment from scouring and erosion due to tsunami and wave effect. In this technique, whole tyres are used.”

“Since tyres do not look good, planting of trees and shrubs are suggested and our field experiment shows that tyre can be planted easily and plants can cover them to make the surrounding green,” he explains.

Test results have indicated that the use of these techniques leads not only to the reduction of the seismic load, but also the seismically induced permanent displacement of the structure.

The techniques also could prevent the bumpiness of the backfill after an earthquake, thus maintaining the performance of infrastructural facilities after strong earthquakes.

In the recent Nepal quake, besides killing thousands of people, the deadly earthquake has also had a heavy toll on buildings.

According to estimates, at least 175 residential buildings were destroyed in central Kathmandu while nearly 150,000 dwellings collapsed across the country.

Hazarika had been in Nepal twice as part of the ISSMGE to study natural hazards issues, especially earthquakes, liquefaction and landslide.

He said he would be more than happy to share his expertise and explore possibilities of implementation of his techniques in India.

“Northeast of India which has high probability of similar earthquakes as in Nepal needs utmost disaster mitigation measures. It is time to act now otherwise it will be too late,” he warned.

Was this the big earthquake that was predicted in the Himalayas?

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“Blind thrust” quakes are ones that do not break the surface, and tend to be more frequent.

The main fault in Nepal marks where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates crash into each other — also known as the Main Frontal Thrust (MFT) fault. Recent studies have shown that this fault has a rich history of evident and not-so-evident quakes, and was ripe for another major one.

In an interview to The Hindu in May 2013, Vinod Kumar Gaur, seismologist with the Centre for Mathematical Modelling and Computer Simulation, had said: “Calculations show that there is sufficient accumulated energy [in the MFT], now to produce an 8 magnitude earthquake. I cannot say when. It may not happen tomorrow, but it could possibly happen sometime this century, or wait longer to produce a much larger one.”

In a study published in the journal Nature Geoscience in December 2012, a research team led by Nanyang Technological University (NTU) discovered that massive earthquakes in the range of 8 to 8.5 magnitudes on the Richter scale had left clear ground scars in the central Himalayas

High resolution imagery and dating techniques showed that in 1255 and 1934, two great earthquakes ruptured the surface of the Earth in the Himalayas. The 1934 earthquake broke the surface over a length of more than 150 km.

Other than these “surface rupture” quakes, scientists have also found evidence of multiple “blind thrust” quakes that did not break the surface. These records indicate that the region has a rich history of quakes in the past centuries.

The leading scientist of the NTU study had then said that the existence of such devastating quakes in the past meant that quakes of the same magnitude could happen again in the region in future, especially in areas which have yet to have their surface broken by a temblor.

Surface rupture quakes are not only extremely violent, but also they tend to release most or all of the accumulated strain in the fault. “Blind thrust” quakes are ones that do not break the surface, and tend to be more frequent.

‘Fukushima lessons: Any notion that nuclear power is clean is obsolete’.

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The unit No.1 (L) and No. 2 reactor building of the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant (Reuters / Itsuo Inouye)

The unit No.1 (L) and No. 2 reactor building of the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant (Reuters / Itsuo Inouye)

The world must phase out nuclear power because it is absolutely not clean from the mining processing of uranium to the generation of high-level radioactive waste, Kevin Kamps for the radioactive waste watchdog Beyond Nuclear, told RT.

It’s been four years since the most powerful earthquake in Japan’s history struck the Fukushima nuclear power plant. All of Japan’s 43 operable reactors have been shut down since 2013, because of safety checks required after the accident. The operator of the nuclear plant has sent a second robot inside the Fukushima reactor to collect data from it. The first robot became immovable after recording some footage from inside the reactor.

RT: Since the disaster, Japan has allocated more than $15 billion to an unprecedented project to lower radiation in towns near the power plant. However few locals believe Tokyo’s assurances that the site will eventually be cleaned up. Do you think their fears are reasonable?

‘

Kevin Kamps: Yes, it is an unprecedented catastrophe. Of course there was Chernobyl, but in this area of Japan – it is so densely populated all over. So when they are trying to clear the landscape down to a certain depth, it is going to be more and more expensive. When you add all of the projects from decommissioning of the nuclear power plant to trying to clean up the landscape to loss of economic activity – we’re talking hundreds of billions of dollars all together. It is going to be very difficult for anything like normal life ever to return there.

RT: In addition to massive radioactive remains, Japan’s greenhouse gas emissions are on the rise following the increase in coal-fired power. Should environmentalists sound the alarm here?

KK: Just in recent days there have been the admissions by high-ranking Tokyo Electric officials that the decommissioning of the nuclear power plant could take more like 200 years because of the lack of technology to do the job. They are going to have to invent all of these robotic systems and engineering processes to try to remove the melted cores at Fukushima Daiichi because that is their current plan unlike Chernobyl with the sarcophagus. The current plan in Japan is to remove those melted cores to somewhere else – perhaps to geologic disposal, they haven’t said. But it is going to be very challenging.

RT: How has the country been handling the shortage of nuclear energy so far?

KK: It is high time for Japan, but I should also say the US and many other countries, to do what Germany is doing – which is to make the transition in its energy sector to efficiency and renewables. Germany will phase out the nuclear power by 2022. This is a direct response to Fukushima. And it will also largely phase out fossil fuel by the middle of the century, by 2050. Germany is the fourth largest economy in the world. So if Germany can do it, so can other developed countries in the world. It is high time that we do this so that dangerous nuclear power plants can be shot down, and we don’t have to turn to polluting fossil fuels.

RT: What is the main importance of nuclear power phase-out in your opinion?

KK: I think it’s very important that world turned from the nuclear power. It is absolutely not clean from the mining and processing of uranium to the generation of high-level radioactive waste. Then the routine radiation releases is even from normally operating nuclear power plants. But then certainly you have the disasters like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. Any notion that nuclear power is clean is obsolete at this point.

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (Reuters / Kyodo)

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe

RT: On Tuesday, a Japanese court halted the restart of two reactors at the Takahama plant in Fukui prefecture citing safety concerns. Why did the judges issue such a ruling?

KK: They are having a very difficult time. Just in recent days again a judge in Fukui prefecture ruled for the second time against the restart of atomic reactors in their prefecture, this time at Takahama. Two reactor units were blocked by this judge’s ruling from restarting. And last year he ruled against two reactors at the Oi nuclear power plant. So the local population, the local governors of prefectures, and local elected officials like mayors have put a stop to these plants restarting reactors in Japan.

RT: Do you think this latest move by the court is a major blow to the Prime Minister’s attempts to return to atomic energy?

KK: Yes, and in this particular case in the last couple days the judge in Fukui prefecture ruled that the new regulations – supposedly based on lessons learned from Fukushima by the Japanese Nuclear Regulation Authority – are irrational and do not guarantee protection of public health and safety and the environment. So it is a big blow to Prime minister, [Shinzo] Abe’s plans to restart reactors.

RT: All 40 reactors in Japan are shot down at the moment, aren’t they?

KK: That’s right; all 40 reactors in Japan are currently shot down. And this has been the case largely since the Fukushima catastrophe began. There have been a few exceptions but for very short periods of time.

RT: If the court comes up with further restrictions that would eventually extend the countrywide shutdown of the reactors. What are the consequences likely to be for Japan’s economy?

KK: It has made it. There have been challenges and difficulties; there has been a crash course in energy efficiency and also in energy conservation… And … there have been imports of fossil fuels, natural gas and coal. That is why I said [that] it is important for Japan to as quickly as possible transition to a renewable energy economy. In fact, that prime minister who served during the beginning of the catastrophe, Naoto Kan, implemented laws that would make that renewable transition happen more efficiently.

RT: Are there any achievement that have been made by the Japanese government trying to tackle the problem? Any good news?

KK: The good news is that renewables, especially efficiency, are very quickly deployable. You can establish a large scale solar photovoltaic facility in a matter of months, the same with wind turbines and efficiency is even faster than that. You have companies in Japan that are poised to do this kind of work…So there is a real promise in renewables; Japan has tremendous resourcesboth domestically, but also for the export and the installation of renewables around the world. And you have to always remember that the devastation caused by Fukushima Daiichi is a very negative thing for the Japanese economy. So you could have 40 good years at a nuclear power plant like Fukushima Daiichi, and you can have one bad day that is now tuned into four bad years, and there is no end and sight- this will go on for very long time.

RT: Everyone in Japan and all over the world understands that it is very dangerous industry and something should be done to prevent future catastrophes. So why are Japanese authorities slowing down all these processes?

KK: It is a form of addiction; it is a form of political power that is very deeply ingrained. The Japanese nuclear power industry dates back to the 1950’s. The Liberal Democratic Party of Prime Minister Abe, one of its founding planks and its platform was pro-nuclear power. Apparently, it is very difficult for these powerful elites to learn lessons and to change their ways. But I think the Japanese people are showing that they have had enough of these risks to their country: first suffering the atomic bombings of 1945 and now also suffering the worst that nuclear power can deliver as well.

Officials reject concerns over 500 percent radiation increase on California beach.

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AFP Photo / Spencer Platt

Health officials in California are now telling residents not to worry after a video uploaded to the internet last month seemed to show high levels of radiation at a Pacific Coast beach.

The video, “Fukushima radiation hits San Francisco,” has been viewed nearly half-a-million times since being uploaded to YouTube on Christmas Eve, and its contents have caused concern among residents who fear that nuclear waste from the March 2011 disaster in Japan may be arriving on their side of the Pacific Ocean.

Throughout the course of the seven-minute-long clip, a man tests out his Geiger counter radiation detector while walking through Pacifica State Beach outside of San Francisco. At times, the monitor on the machine seems to show radiation of 150 counts-per-minute, or the equivalent of around five times what is typically found in that type of environment.

After the video began to go viral last month, local, state and federal officials began to investigate claims that waste from the Fukushima nuclear plant has washed ashore in California. Only now, though, are authorities saying that they have no reason to believe that conditions along the West Coast are unsafe.

The Half Moon Bay Review reported on Friday that government officials conducted tests along California’s Pacific Coast after word of the video began to spread online, but found no indication that radiation levels had reached a hazardous point.

“It’s not something that we feel is an immediate public health concern,” Dean Peterson, the county environmental health director, told the Review. “We’re not even close to the point of saying that any of this is from Fukushima.”

Screenshot from YouTube user Kill0Your0TV

Screenshot from YouTube user Kill0Your0TV

According to the Review’s Mark Noack, counts-per-minute does indeed measure radiation, but “does not directly equate to the strength or its hazard level to humans.” And while the paper has reported that testing conducted by Peterson’s department on their own Geiger counters has since revealedradiation level of about 100 micro-REM per hour, or about five times the normal amount, officials are confident that there is nothing to be concerned about.

“Although the radiation levels were clearly higher than is typical, Peterson emphasized that it was still not unsafe for humans,” Noack wrote. “A person would need to be exposed to 100 microREMs of radiation for 50,000 hours before it surpassed safety guidelines by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, he explained.”

Screenshot from YouTube user Kill0Your0TV

Screenshot from YouTube user Kill0Your0TV

Even so, officials are still uncertain as to why those levels — even if they are relatively safe — seem to be five-times higher than what is expected. Peterson told the Review he was “befuddled” over the ordeal, but suggested the culprit could be something not too sinister — such as red-painted eating utensils buried on the beach.

“I honestly think the end result of this is that it’s just higher levels of background radiation,” he said.

Researchers at the Geiger Counter Bulletin website have since tried to make sense of the reading on their own, and agree that the levels being detected are several times over what should be expected. According to a post on their website from this weekend, however, an independent testing of soil taken from near Pacifica State Beach tested positive for some radioactive material — but nothing that would have come from Fukushima.

The results of testing conducted by California’s Department of Public Health are expected to be announced later this week.

Fish Washing Ashore in California Could be Warning Sign of Coming Earthquake.

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Three “Sea Monsters” as the the video of a CNN news clip calls them, have now washed up on California’s shores, two oarfish and a Saber-Toothed whale, all unlikely to be seen on the coast of California.

Three different articles and news clips I have watched this morning all mention the same thing, which is an Asian myth that when these Sea Monsters come to shore, they are warning of an impending earthquake, generally of massive proportions.

There’s a Japanese legend that oarfish beach themselves to warn of an impending earthquake. And, in fact, dozens of them did just that in Japan about a year before the devastating Fukushima quake and tsunami in 2011.

Backing up that assertion is an article from May 2011, which shows that oarfish did, indeed, warn Japan of the major 2011 Earthquake, which caused the tsunami that devastated and crippled the Fukushima nuclear plant.

Is it a myth if they have evidence of it happening?

California has seen swarms of minor earthquakes, with a recent 6.5 magnitude hit, with another 6.5 hitting Mexico on October 19, according to USGS.

For generations we have heard the expression  one day California is going to have “the Big One,” because experts and scientists have warned it is going to happen, meaning the mother of all earthquakes is going to devastate the state…. are these sea creatures warning of it now?

In March of 2010, British newspaper The Telegraph published this articlethat speculated about an oncoming powerful earthquake there after dozens of giant oarfish have been found washed ashore on beaches in Japan and some caught in fishermen’s nets. 

Is it a myth if they have evidence of it happening?

California has seen swarms of minor earthquakes, with a recent 6.5 magnitude hit, with another 6.5 hitting Mexico on October 19, according to USGS.

For generations we have heard the expression  one day California is going to have “the Big One,” because experts and scientists have warned it is going to happen, meaning the mother of all earthquakes is going to devastate the state…. are these sea creatures warning of it now?

Source: Wake Up Americans

Pakistani quakes leave scientists debating tech’s role.

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 In the wake of a series of large earthquakes that have struck Pakistan over the past few weeks, the country’s scientists are debating howtechnology might help limit the devastation caused by future disasters.
 
A day before the first quake, which hit southwest Pakistan on 24 September, a collaboration between US and Pakistani geoscientists was announced. The project, which has been allocated US$451,000 over three years by the US Agency for International Development, will unite researchers to study the Chaman Fault — the location of the recent earthquakes.
 

Shuhab Khan, associate professor of geology at the University of Houston, United States, is leading the US side of the project. “There have been multiple big earthquakes in the area over the last 35,000 years,” he says. “The city of Quetta is particularly in danger as it lies near the fault. Bigger earthquakes could even affect the wider area — Karachi and its surroundings, and possibly some cities in Afghanistan as well.”
 
He hopes that modern technology — including lidar, a form of radar that uses laser radiation — will help Pakistan prepare better for earthquakes.
 
“This technology has been used successfully to identify the direction of movement and major cracks in faults,” Shuhab Khan tells SciDev.Net. “So if we can use it to study the Chaman Fault, it should help Pakistan understand the risks of earthquakes better and prepare better.”
 
Currently, the Chaman Fault is one of the least studied in the world, he says.
 
Zahid Rafi, director of the National Seismic Monitoring Centre at the Pakistan Meteorological Department in Islamabad, says that he and his team have been working to improve their understanding of local seismic activity.
 
Before the devastating earthquake that struck Kashmir in 2005, Rafi says his department was using manual seismometers, but since then they have introduced automated seismometers, accelographs and GPS (global positioning systems) worth 500 million Pakistan rupees (around US$4.7 million). These are all networked with a central databank in Islamabad.
 
But Shuhab Khan remains unconvinced that the national network of seismometers set up after the 2005 quake has helped matters. “I haven’t seen much improvement in seismic research in Pakistan,” he says.
 
Asif Khan, the director of the National Centre of Excellence in Geology at the University of Peshawar, Pakistan, says the establishment of the countrywide network of seismological stations is a “healthy sign” for future earthquake mitigation measures. But there is still a “lack of seismological research and records,” he adds.
 
“Academic research was being hampered by a lack of seismic technologies. Productive research in this area needs old and new seismic data but, unfortunately, Pakistan’s old seismic data is either not reliable or of poor quality,” he says.
 
Ali Rashid Tabrez, director general of the National Institute of Oceanography in Karachi, says that “data gathering with new seismic gadgets will enable the government to create a seismic databank. This should help identify quake hot spots and seismic activity on the seabed while informing building codes and disaster management strategies.”
 
According to its ten-year National Disaster Management Plan, Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority is starting a US$1.4 billion project to produce national earthquake hazard maps, contingency plans and risk assessments.
 

Source: SciVx