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5.7 magnitude northern California earthquake felt across two states
24
May, 2013
An
earthquake in far northeastern California did not injure anyone but
did cause moderate damage, including to a water tank that supplies
hundreds of homes with drinking water, local authorities said Friday.
Plumas
County Sheriff Greg Hagwood said the magnitude-5.7 quake sent items
tumbling from grocery store shelves and downed chimneys when it hit
at 8:47 p.m. Thursday.
The
U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Center said the temblor
was centered near Greenville, about 25 miles southwest of Susanville,
and was felt as far away as San Francisco and in two other states. It
was followed by multiple aftershocks, including a magnitude 4.9 quake
that struck early Friday morning.
About
300 people were affected by the damaged water system, Hagwood said.
"Without
question, it's the strongest quake I've ever felt here. It was very
unsettling and it lasted long enough to create a measure of anxiety,"
Hagwood said. "The supermarkets and stores had a lot of things
come off the shelves."
Pacific
Gas & Electric said about 660 customers lost power on the
southwestern edge of Lake Almanor at about 9:39 p.m. Thursday.
Susan
Shephard and her husband Alan Shephard, who run the Quail Lodge at
Lake Almanor near Greenville very close to the epicenter, said they
were watching "The Hunger Games" on TV when the whole
building started shaking.
"All
of a sudden things started falling off the shelves, mirrors fell off
the wall, vases fell down to the floor, everything started crashing,"
Shephard told the Redding Record-Searchlight. "It felt like the
end of our world."
The
Susanville Fire Department said it had received no reports of damage,
and a Plumas County Sheriff's Office dispatcher said calls were
flooding into its office but no reports of damage.
Thousands
of people reported feeling the quake, as far away as the San
Francisco Bay area and across the borders into Oregon and Nevada,
according to the USGS website.
KCRA-TV
in Sacramento reported that the Plumas County temblor was felt in
downtown Sacramento, about 145 miles south of the epicenter.
People
in Yuba and Sutter Counties, south of Plumas, said they felt a
rolling quake, according to the Marysville Appeal-Democrat.
"People
in the area felt a strong jolt, but it was not enough to generate
serious damage, based on early field reports," said Rafael
Abreu, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey's National
Earthquake Center in Golden, Colo.
Deep
8.3 magnitude earthquake strikes Sea of Okhotsk in Russia’s Far
East
A
magnitude 8.2 earthquake struck off Russia's eastern coast on Friday,
briefly prompting a tsunami scare but causing no casualties or
substantial damage, Russian emergency authorities said.
24
May, 2013
The
epicentre of the quake was located at a depth of 385 miles in the Sea
of Okhotsk, 244 miles west of the nearest city,
Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
The
quake was felt in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, the main city on the
Kamchatka peninsula and home to a nuclear submarine base, and on
Sakhalin island, where Russia's largest liquefied natural gas project
is located.
Regional
emergency authorities issued a tsunami warning for Sakhalin and the
Kurile islands, advising residents of dangerous areas to seek high
ground, but lifted the warning several minutes later.
Residents
of northern Japan felt the quake but there was no tsunami warning
from Japan's meteorological agency.
Pacific Plate turbulence increases
At 103 million square kilometers, the Pacific plate is the largest of the tectonic plates and consequently the most violent. Geological forces are tearing at the integrity and stability of this large lithospheric cross-section of the planet. As I reported several days ago, seismic tension was mounting along the Pacific tectonic plate. The cascading series of earthquakes over the last 24 hours are yet one more indication that dynamic geological change is accelerating within the interior of the planet. These processes of change will have profound implications for the entire Ring of Fire and all subduction zones located within this region.
Chirinkotan
Volcano erupts in Kuril Islands of Far East Russia
The
remote volcano in the northern Kuriles is probably in eruption, the
latest SVERT report and satellite images suggest. A plume of gas and
steam, and possibly some minor amounts ash was seen with the MODIS
sensor onboard the NASA Terra satellite this morning.
Satellite
data also indicate that activity had likely already started in early
May, because a small thermal anomaly can be traced back on archive
pictures to 7 May. One should take into account that frequent dense
cloud cover often prevents such observations, so activity could have
started earlier than that.
It
is not known what kind of activity is occurring at the volcano.
Possibilities include some minor explosive (strombolian ?) activity
at the summit, or lava flows that might be reaching the sea and
produce the steam plume observed.
The
last eruption of the volcano was (probably) in 2004.
Eruption
continues in Mexico
Mexico’s
Popocatepetl volcano unleashed another wave of powerful exhalations
and explosions in the early hours of Thursday (May 23), officials
reported. Hundreds of individual exhalations reaching up to 2.5 km
(1.5 miles) of smoke and ash spewed out of Popocatepetl in the latest
escalation in activity. An explosion at 02:54 local time (06:54 GMT)
also sent fragments out over 1.5 kilometers (0.9 miles), Mexico’s
National Centre for Disaster Prevention reported. -WSBRADIO
Alert
level raised on Chile’s Copahue volcano to orange after ash
emissions
SERNAGEOMIN
has raised the alert level to orange. Since May 15, a progressive
increase in seismic activity as well emissions of gas and now some
ash have been observed.
Both
earthquakes related to rock fracturing and fluid movements have
picked up in numbers and possibly indicate a new magmatic intrusion
on its way.
This
scenario is confirmed by the start of small ash emissions and glow at
the crater which is visible at night. The plume of gas and ash could
be seen from space by the MODIS sensor, streching about 100 km to the
southeast.
Copahue
volcano had already experienced a first increase of activity in
December, and a second one in January. No eruption followed and alert
was lowered to green in April before returning to yellow again soon
after.
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