Earth changes - 26 January, 2013

A light day for earth activity

Earthquake in Iran, felt in Azerbaijan

Earthquake in Iran was felt in the territory of Azerbaijan, said a statement on the official website of Ministry of Emergency Situations of Azerbaijan.

According to information received by the National Center for Crisis Management from ANAS seismic center, on Saturday, earthquake hit Iran at 19:10 Baku time.

Quake up to three points were felt in the border with Iran. No casualties or damage in the territory of Azerbaijan has been reported.

http://en.trend.az/news/incident/2112507.html

A moderate earthquake struck Iranian Province East Azerbaijan this afternoon. USGS gives M 4,8 and a depth of 18 km for this quake. The epicenter lays 66 km northeast of Tabris, where two devasting earthquakes on August 11th 2012 killed more than 300 people.

For this aftershock we can not exclude minor to moderate damage, which is normal if such a quake occurs in Iran, although similar aftershocks last year were harmless. So far, we have got no information from there.

Update: Rescue teams were sent to this area. Telephone lines were disconnected by the earthquake, so that there is currently no possibility to contact the epicenter area.

Update 17.35 UTC: At least two people were injured by the earthquake. Some houses in their village Shahsavar were damaged.(Still no detailed information) There are some other villages where we still have no information about damage or injuries.

Update 18.19 UTC: New reports say there were at least 6 people injured in village Shahsavar. They were carried to medical centers by the Red Crescent rescue team. No details about damage in this and other villages so far.

Update 18.36 UTC: The number of injuries is increasing with every new report. Now there are at least 10 injured persons comfirmed.

6 ot them were injured due to the stress and panic. The others were injured while running out of their houses. 7 of them were from Shahsavar village. They all were taken to a hostital in Tabris.

There are still no reports of any major damage. There were some damaged houses in Shahsavar and also some minor damages in Tabris. No information from the other villages so far.

http://earthquake-report.com/2013/01/25/earthquakes-in-the-world-on-january-26-2013-m4-5-or-more/

Moderate shallow earthquake in Madagascar

A very rare M 5,3 earthquake hit southern Madagascar yesterday at 23.37 UTC and today 2.37 local time. It had a shallow depth of only 14 km. The epicenter lays a few kilometers offshore a relatively strong populated coastline, 28 km south of Toliara (pop. 115 000). USGS ShakeMap gives Intensity VI for the closest towns and MMI V for Toliara. Due to this very unusual high intensity for Madagascar, where earthquakes like this only happen once a decade, we expect at least minor damage in the closest towns.

In USGS database there are no information of any known damaging earthquake in Madagascar ever, so we have no base to compare this quake to earlier quakes.

So far, there are no information about this earthquake in general in local press. We’ll go on searching for information and write an update if necessary.

http://earthquake-report.com/2013/01/25/earthquakes-in-the-world-on-january-26-2013-m4-5-or-more/