LA residents told to be prepared for disaster

The planet has now entered a window of elevated risks for a major earthquake to strike somewhere on the planet from now, through March 23, 2013. People in seismically high-risk regions should remain alert and prepared for the potential occurrence or occurrences of seismic events and their associated hazards.

--–The Extinction Protocol

LAResidents Urged To Prep For ‘Two Weeks On Your Own’ and be prepared for disaster

CBS,

11 March, 2013

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — People from Los Angeles to Tokyo have been gathering to honor the victims of the devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan two years ago.

KNX 1070′s Claudia Peschiutta reports a memorial service held on Sunday near Little Tokyo included a panel discussion on how residents in the Southland can prepare for the next major quake.

Fire officials were on hand to remind the public of what a similar quake could mean for Southern California.

“A lot of people don’t realize that we are earthquake prone in California, but we also could get a tsunami,” Los Angeles County Fire Asst. Chief David Stone said. “We just haven’t had one in a long time.”

Residents were urged to prepare for a number of disaster scenarios, including how to cope for being at least “two weeks on your own”.

“The message for a lot of us needs to be, ‘Be ready for anything’,” said Battalion Chief Larry Collins. “The message used to be 72 hours, but we’ve seen in disasters like [Hurricane] Katrina, even [Hurricane] Sandy recently, that, really, if it’s wiped out your infrastructure, and your electricity grid and your communications, it will be very likely be more than three days before you start getting food, water and other supplies coming in from outside.”

The event also featured an interfaith service including Buddhist monks, a Jewish cantor and Christian representatives.

Residents in Tokyo on Monday, meanwhile, stood in silence at 2:46 p.m., the very moment the magnitude-9.0 quake struck on March 11, 2011, and wiped out entire coastal communities along with triggering a tsunami that caused three reactors to meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Small earthquake hits near Benton in southern Illinois

Chicago Tribune,

12 March, 2013

A small earthquake measuring 2.7 magnitude hit near Benton in southern Illinois this morning but appears to have done little, if any, damage in the rural area.

The quake occurred around 5 a.m. about 11 miles east of where Interstate 57 passes through Benton, the seat of Franklin County, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The closest town is Macedonia, population 50.

The Franklin County sheriff's office said it had gotten no reports of injuries or damages.

The quake hit to the north and west of what is called the New Madrid seismic zone.

Strong earthquakes from the New Madrid fault and other faults in what's known as the Illinois Basin-Ozark Dome area have hit southern Illinois and nearby parts of Missouri, Arkansas, Indiana and Kentucky over the years, including a series of devastating quakes in 1811 and 1812.

The largest earthquake in the area in memory was in 1968 and registered a 5.4 magnitude, what the geological survey calls a moderately damaging quake.

The last strong earthquake to hit southern Illinois was in April 2008, when a 5.2 magnitude quake struck near West Salem, affecting areas including Mount Carmel, about 80 miles east of Benton.

A mild earthquake, with a 3.8-magnitude, hit the Chicago area on Feb. 10, 2010.