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Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Jamaica Shares Same Earthquake Faultline as Haiti
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
This was disclosed by the Head of the Earthquake Unit of the University of the West Indies (UWI), Dr. Lyndon Brown, at a JIS Think Tank in Kingston on January 20.
"The fault that created the quake in Haiti runs right across the western end of the Dominican Republic, through Haiti, cuts across the Caribbean Sea into Jamaica and continues more or less into different fault lines across Jamaica: one continuous fault line runs across from Haiti to Jamaica," Dr. Brown stated.
He added that the activities in the region, following the Haiti earthquake, are not unusual, at this time.
"A number of aftershocks have taken place, and this is quite natural. The aftershocks will be more continuous after the large earthquake, but then this will die down and become less frequent," he said. Aftershocks, such as the magnitude 6.1 tremor that occurred in Haiti again on the Wednesday morning (January 20), can be large but will become less frequent over time.
He said, however, that the other earthquakes that have taken place in Guatemala, Venezuela, and El Salvador are happening on the Pacific Plate fault line, which is not the same one on which Haiti and Jamaica is located.
"Right now we do not see the association between the events," he added.
He said that while studies are being done by an American researcher, to see the relationships between the fault lines, none has so far been established, and what is happening is that stresses are being naturally released along respective fault lines.
"Earthquakes are very, very, common. If you look at a map of Jamaica you will see that last year we had about eight felt events (earthquakes) and about 200 that were weak but could just be picked up as earthquakes," he said.
He stated that, on average, there have been about16 earthquakes on an annual basis that are greater that magnitude 7.0 , about 120 around magnitude 6.0 and an innumerable amount at magnitude 5.0 and below.
"What is happening in the region is very interesting. Earthquakes are natural events that happen when stresses that have built up along fault lines are released, creating elastic waves that generate convolutions on the face of the earth," Dr. Brown said.
He added that the destruction wrought by an earthquake is dependent on the location and strength of a building, as well as the strength of the earthquake.
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Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Haiti Quake Was Disaster Waiting to Happen
Jan. 13, 2010
Scientists Warned of "Major Seismic Hazard" to Island in 2008; Nation's Poverty Exacerbates Effects
(CBS/ AP) A massive earthquake devastated Haiti Tuesday, but scientists warned of such an event back in 2008.
Back at the 18th Caribbean Geological Conference in March 2008, five scientists warned the Enriquillo-Plaintain Garden fault zone presented a "a major seismic hazard" to Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which share the island of Hispaniola.
Tuesday's 7.0-magnitude quake occurred along that same fault line.
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"We were concerned about it," Paul Mann, one of the paper's authors and a senior research scientist at the University of Texas' Institute for Geophysics, told CNN.
"The problem with these kinds of strikes is that they can remain quiescent - dormant - for hundreds of years. So it's hard to predict when they'll occur."
The quake struck at 4:53 p.m. Tuesday, centered just 10 miles west of Port-au-Prince at a depth of only 5 miles, the U.S. Geological Survey said. USGS geophysicist Kristin Marano called it the strongest earthquake since 1770 in what is now Haiti.
"Closeness to the surface is a major factor contributing to the severity of ground shaking caused by an earthquake of any given magnitude," Dr. David Rothery, a planetary scientist with in the U.K., told the BBC.
Haiti's lack of real construction standards - a byproduct of the country's widespread poverty and political instability - have only exacerbated the inevitable disaster's effects.
"Because the earthquake was so close to the capital city, because the city is so populated and because the country is so poor - the houses are not well-built - it could cause significant casualties," Jian Lin, one of the geologists who co-authored the 2008 paper, told CNN.
In November 2008, following the collapse of a school in Petionville, the mayor of Port-au-Prince estimated about 60 percent of buildings were shoddily built and unsafe in normal circumstances.
Complete Coverage:
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U.N. Headquarters Destroyed in Haiti .
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Source:http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/01/13/world/main6090996.shtml
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