Tag Archives: Earthquake

Magnitude-5.8 earthquake strikes in western Montana: USGS

By Brendan O’Brien

(Reuters) – A magnitude-5.8 earthquake hit western Montana early on Thursday, the U.S. Geological Survey reported, and people felt the tremor hundreds of miles away.

The earthquake struck five miles (9 km) southeast of Lincoln, Montana, at about 12:30 a.m. local time, the USGS said on its website.

“New experience: woken up by an earthquake. No damage just spooky as heck!” Cole Fawcett tweeted in Crowsnest Pass, Alberta, about 285 miles (460 km) north of Lincoln.

Residents in the U.S. west flooded Twitter early on Thursday with similar experiences.

“My mom woke up and yelled at me and my dad that there was a bear shaking our trailer,” Brad Wynder said on Twitter.

No significant damage or injuries had been reported about an hour after the quake.

More than 10,000 reports from those who felt shaking were collected on the USGS website.

Several aftershocks with magnitudes of more than 4 were reported by the USGS. The Pacific Tsunami Warning center earlier reported the quake with a magnitude of 6.0.

(Editing by Andrew Roche)

Aegean quake shakes buildings in Greece and Turkey, one dead

A damaged house is seen at the village of Vrissa on the Greek island of Lesbos, Greece, after a strong earthquake shook the eastern Aegean

ISTANBUL/ATHENS (Reuters) – A powerful 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck the western coast of Turkey and the Greek island of Lesbos on Monday, killing one woman and rattling buildings from the Aegean Turkish province of Izmir to the Greek capital Athens.

The epicenter of the quake was about 84 km (52 miles) northwest of the Turkish coastal city of Izmir and 15 km south of Lesbos, the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) said on its website. The National Observatory of Athens put it slightly lower at 6.1.

Extensive damage was reported at a village on Lesbos, which was at the forefront of a migration crisis two years ago when hundreds of thousands of war refugees landed there seeking a gateway into Europe.

TV footage showed collapsed buildings and debris blocking narrow streets at Vrisa, a community of around 600 people to the south of the island.

“Tens of buildings have collapsed and roads are blocked off,” said Marios Apostolides, the divisional commander of the fire brigade.

Rescue team members search for victims at a collapsed building in the village of Vrissa on the Greek island of Lesbos, Greece, after a strong earthquake shook the eastern Aegean,

Rescue team members search for victims at a collapsed building in the village of Vrissa on the Greek island of Lesbos, Greece, after a strong earthquake shook the eastern Aegean, June 12, 2017. REUTERS/Giorgos Moutafis

A woman, believed to be about 60, was crushed by the roof of her home and died, the island’s mayor said. Local officials said at least 10 people were injured.

The quake was felt as far away as the Greek capital of Athens, some 367 km (228 miles) southwest of the island.

Major geological fault lines cross the region and small earthquakes are common, though anything higher than 5.5 is rare. Anything exceeding that is capable of causing extensive damage.

“The trembling was really bad. Everything in my clinic started shaking wildly, we all ran outside with the patients,” said Didem Eris, a 50-year-old dentist in Izmir’s Karsiyaka district. “We are very used to earthquakes as people of Izmir but this one was different. I thought to myself that this time we were going to die.”

Social media users who said they were in western Turkey reported a strong and sustained tremor.

“We will be seeing the aftershocks of this in the coming hours, days and weeks,” said Haluk Ozener, head of Turkey’s Kandilli Observatory, adding that the aftershocks could have magnitudes of up to 5.5.

More than 600 people died in October 2011 in Turkey’s eastern province of Van after a quake of 7.2 magnitude and powerful aftershocks. In 1999, two massive earthquakes killed about 20,000 people in the densely populated northwest of the country.

(Reporting by Turkey and Athens newsrooms; Writing by David Dolan; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

5.3-magnitude quake shakes big island of Hawaii: USGS

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A 5.3-magnitude earthquake shook the Big Island of Hawaii on Thursday, near the Kilauea Volcano, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or substantial damage from the quake and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said no tsunami was expected to result.

According to the USGS, the temblor rattled the Big Island at 7:01 a.m. local time (1601 GMT) at a depth of 8 kilometers (4.9 miles).

“As in all earthquakes, be aware of the possibility of aftershocks,” Hawaii County Civil Defense said in an alert.

“If the earthquake was strongly felt in your area, precautionary checks should be made for any damages, especially to utility connections of gas, water and power,” the agency said.

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

U.S. extends ‘temporary protected status’ to Haitians until January

FILE PHOTO: A Flag from Haiti is pictured in a local store as a woman walks under rain at the neighborhood of Brooklyn in New York, U.S. May 13, 2017. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz/File Photo

By Julia Edwards Ainsley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Homeland Security will allow more than 50,000 victims of Haiti’s 2010 earthquake to remain in the United States with work authorizations until January 2018, department officials told reporters on Monday.

The Obama administration first granted protections to Haitians who arrived in the United States within a year of the devastating earthquake and the group’s status has since been extended.

Three DHS officials, who agreed to speak to reporters only on the condition of anonymity, said Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly has assessed the situation in Haiti and believes conditions there are improving but still necessitate protected status for Haitians living in the United States.

The officials said, however, that Haitians in the United States under what is known as temporary protected status should begin acquiring travel documents to return to Haiti, noting that DHS has not committed to extending protections past January.

U.S. law allows DHS to grant temporary protected status to citizens of countries ravaged by violence, disease and natural disasters.

Other countries designated for temporary protected status include Sudan, Somalia, Syria, El Salvador, Nepal and Yemen.

The Department of Homeland Security will issue a notice to the Federal Register to extend temporary protected status within the coming days. After a 60-day period, Haitians under the status will be given new work authorizations valid until January.

(Editing by Bernadette Baum and Dan Grebler)

Ancient quakes may point to sinking risk for part of California coast

The city of Long Beach is seen at dusk, California, U.S., September 8, 201

By Tom James

SEATTLE (Reuters) – The Big One may be overdue to hit California but scientists near Los Angeles have found a new risk for the area during a major earthquake: abrupt sinking of land, potentially below sea level.

The last known major quake on the San Andreas fault occurred in 1857, but three quakes over the last 2,000 years on nearby faults made ground just outside Los Angeles city limits sink as much as three feet, according to a study published Monday in the journal Scientific Reports.

Seismologists estimate the 800 mile-long San Andreas, which runs most of the length of the state, should see a large quake roughly every 150 years.

Scientists from California State University Fullerton and the United States Geological Survey found evidence the older quakes caused part of the coastline south of Long Beach to drop by one-and-a-half to three feet.

Today that could result in the area ending up at or below sea level, said Cal State Fullerton professor Matt Kirby, who worked with the paper’s lead author, graduate student Robert Leeper.

“It’s something that would happen relatively instantaneously,” Kirby said. “Probably today if it happened, you would see seawater rushing in.”

The study was limited to a roughly two-square-mile area inside the Seal Beach National Wildlife Refuge, near the Newport-Inglewood and Rose Canyon faults. Kirby acknowledged that the exact frequency of events on the faults is unclear, as is the risk that another quake will occur in the near future.

The smallest of the historic earthquakes was likely more intense than the strongest on record in the area, the magnitude 6.3 Long Beach earthquake of 1933, which killed 120 people and caused the inflation-adjusted equivalent of nearly a billion dollars in damage.

Today, the survey site is sandwiched by the cities of Huntington Beach and Long Beach, home to over 600,000 people, while nearby Los Angeles County has a population of 10 million.

Seismologist John Vidale, head of the University of Washington-based Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, said after reviewing the study he was skeptical such powerful quakes could occur very frequently in the area.

Kirby noted that the team could only collect soil core samples within the relatively undisturbed refuge, and that taking deeper samples would shed light on the seismic record even further back, potentially giving scientists more examples of similar quakes to work from.

(The story was refiled to correct the second paragraph to clarify timing of last known major quake on the San Andreas fault)

(Reporting by Tom James; Editing by Patrick Enright and James Dalgleish)

Six years after Fukushima nuclear disaster, residents trickle back to deserted towns

Ukedo Elementary School Principal, Chieko Oyama, visits the school damaged by the March 11, 2011 tsunami, near Tokyo Electric Power Co's (TEPCO) tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Namie town, Fukushima prefecture, Japan, March 1, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai

By Kiyoshi Takenaka and Teppei Kasai

NAMIE, Fukushima (Reuters) – A truck occasionally whizzes past the darkened shops with cracked walls and fallen signs that line the main street of Japan’s mostly deserted seaside town of Namie.

Workers repair a damaged home nearby, and about 60 employees busily prepare for the return of former residents in the largely untouched town hall. Not far away, two wild boars stick their snouts in someone’s yard, snuffling for food.

Signs of life are returning nearly six years after panicked residents fled radiation spewed by the nearby Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, when it was struck by an earthquake and tsunami.

Still, only several hundred of the original 21,500 residents plan to return in the first wave, estimates Hidezo Sato, a former seed merchant who helped draw up a blueprint to rebuild the town.

“As a person who used to sell seeds for a living, I believe now is a time to sow seeds” for rebuilding, said Sato, 71. “Harvesting is far away. But I hope I can manage to help bring about fruition.”

Since November, people who registered have been allowed to spend nights in the town, but residents will not need permission to stay round the clock after Japan lifts evacuation orders for parts of Namie and three other towns at the end of March.

Just 4 km (2.5 miles) away from the wrecked plant, Namie is the closest area cleared for the return of residents since the disaster of March 11, 2011.

But the town will never be the same, as radiation contamination has left a big area off limits. And it may never be inhabitable.

More than half – 53 percent – of former residents have decided not to return, a government poll showed last September. They cited concerns over radiation and the safety of the nuclear plant, which is being dismantled in an arduous, 40-year effort.

Fukushima “hot zone” returnees – http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/JAPAN-FUKUSHIMA/0100401R03R/JAPAN-FUKUSHIMA.jpg

OLD FOLKS

More than three-quarters of those aged 29 or less do not intend to return, which means old people could form the bulk of the town’s population in a future largely devoid of children.

“Young people will not go back,” said Yasuo Fujita, a former Namie resident who runs a restaurant in Tokyo, the capital. “There will neither be jobs nor education for children.”

Fujita said he did not want to live near a possible storage site for contaminated soil, now being systematically removed.

Radiation levels at Namie town hall stood at 0.07 microsieverts per hour on Feb. 28, little different from the rest of Japan.

But in the nearby town of Tomioka, a dosimeter read 1.48 microsieverts an hour, nearly 30 times higher than in downtown Tokyo, underscoring lingering radiation hotspots.

For the towns’ evacuation orders to be lifted, radiation must fall below 20 millisieverts per year. They must also have functioning utilities and telecoms systems, besides basic health, elderly care and postal services.

HUNTING BOAR

Namie, which used to have six grade schools and three middle schools, plans to eventually open a joint elementary-junior high school. So children will need to commute to schools elsewhere initially.

A hospital opens later this month, staffed with one full-time and several part-time doctors.

Reconstruction efforts may create some jobs. The town’s mayor, Tamotsu Baba, hopes to draw research and robotics firms.

Prospects for business are not exactly bright in the short term, but lumber company president Munehiro Asada said he restarted his factory in the town to help drive its recovery.

“Sales barely reach a tenth of what they used to be,” he said. “But running the factory is my priority. If no one returns, the town will just disappear.”

Shoichiro Sakamoto, 69, has an unusual job: hunting wild boars encroaching on residential areas in nearby Tomioka. His 13-man squad catches the animals in a trap before finishing them off with air rifles.

“Wild boars in this town are not scared of people these days,” he said. “They stare squarely at us as if saying, ‘What in the world are you doing?’ It’s like our town has fallen under wild boars’ control.”

Some former Namie residents say the evacuation orders should remain until radiation levels recede and the dismantling of the ruined nuclear plant has advanced.

But it is now or never for his town, Mayor Baba believes.

“Six long years have passed. If the evacuation is prolonged further, people’s hearts will snap,” he said. “The town could go completely out of existence.”

(Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka, Teppei Kasai and Toru Hanai: Editing by Malcolm Foster and Clarence Fernandez)

Italian farmers bring sheep to Rome to protest quake response

A sheep is seen in front of the Montecitorio Palace during a protest held by farmers from the earthquake zones of Amatrice, in Rome, Italy March 7, 2017. REUTERS/Max Rossi

ROME (Reuters) – Italian farmers from regions ravaged by earthquakes brought sheep to central Rome on Tuesday to protest what they say are serious delays in reconstruction efforts.

More than 10,000 farm animals have been killed or injured by quake damage and subsequent freezing weather, farmers’ association Coldiretti said.

Outside parliament, a makeshift paddock housed three sheep rescued from areas struck by tremors while farmers waved flags and banners reading “Bureaucracy is more deadly than earthquakes”.

Thousands of farming businesses are housed in the central regions of Lazio, Marche, Abruzzo and Umbria where tremors have rumbled since August.

Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni has approved a draft law to help people affected by the quakes, including 35 million euros ($37 million) to compensate farmers for lost income.

The law also aims to make it easier for regional governments to buy temporary stalls. Farmers say about 85 percent of their livestock need shelter.

“Breeders still don’t know where to put their surviving cows, pigs and sheep, which are either stuck out in the cold, at risk of death and disease, or in derelict buildings,” the farm association said.

Stress caused by cold and fear has reduced milk production in the region by 30 percent. Local crops like lentils are also at risk as seeds cannot be sown on fractured land, it added.

The agriculture ministry said the process of releasing emergency funds to farmers was under way.

($1 = 0.9458 euros)

(Reporting by Isla Binnie; Editing by Julia Glover)

Highest levels of radiation reported by TEPCO from Fukushima power plant

A worker puts up new logo of TEPCO Holdings and Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) Group on the wall ahead of the transition to a holding company system through a compan

By Kami Klein

Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) announced the highest documented radiation levels ever recorded in reactor 2 of the damaged Fukushima  No. 1 power plant.  Based on its analysis of measurements and pictures taken by a remote controlled sensor and camera instrument, radiation levels recorded were the highest ever documented since the triple core meltdown in March 2011. TEPCO also reported close to a 3 foot hole in the metal grating under the pressure vessel of reactor 2 of the damaged Fukushima No. 1 power plant.

According to the Japan Times the power plant has reached a maximum of 530 sieverts per hour.  At 530 sieverts, a person could die from even the briefest exposure.  This highlights the difficulties that lie ahead for TEPCO and the Japanese Government as they try to figure out a way to dismantle all three reactors that were damaged by the March, 2011 9.0 earthquake and giant tsunami that killed almost 16,000 people.

Officials had never taken into account for the “unimaginable” radiation levels that are being seen.  Experts say that 1 sievert could lead to infertility, loss of hair and cataracts.  Cancer risks increase substantially with any radiation levels above the 100 millisieverts or 1 sievert mark.

In a report by the Washington Post, TEPCO recorded radiation near the reactor core using a stick-like robot equipped with a camera and a device designed to measure radiation levels and has suggested that some melted fuel escaped.  Officials state that this was the first time this kind of device has been able to get into this part of the reactor, which explains the unprecedented amount of radiation recorded.  TEPCO said that at this level of radiation, a robot would only operate for less than two hours before it was destroyed.

If deposits that have been seen on portions of the grating are proven to be melted fuel, it would be the first time they have found even a trace of any sign of the fuel rods since the core meltdowns occurred. Levels of radiation are too high to check the actual condition of the fuel, which they believe has melted through their pressure vessels and is pooled at the bottom of their containment units.  This fuel MUST be discovered and removed before the plants can be decommissioned.

Reuters reports that TEPCO has been developing robots that can swim under water and navigate obstacles in damaged tunnels and piping to search for the melted fuel rods.  But as soon as the robots get close to the reactors, the radiation destroys their wiring and renders them useless.  TEPCO does plan to send this robot into Reactor 1 but are still unsure regarding Reactor 2 because of the very intense radiation levels.

Officials still state that these levels may not actually be rising but because they have not been tested so closely to the reactor, they are just now getting a better idea of the true levels recorded. TEPCO does report a 30% margin of error in the tests.

The effects of the radiation on the rest of the world have been in constant discussion and arguments among government officials and environmental scientists.  One year ago, PBS reported that more than 80 percent of the radioactivity from the damaged reactors ended up in the Pacific, far more than ever reached the ocean from Chernobyl or Three Mile Island.  A small fraction is currently on the seafloor, but the rest was swept up by the Kuroshio current, a western Pacific version of the Gulf Stream, and carried out to sea.  Recently, radioactive contamination has been documented near British Columbia and California.

 

Italy pulls last of 29 bodies from avalanche hotel

rescue workers pulling last of bodies from italy avalanche disaster

PENNE, Italy (Reuters) – Rescuers have pulled the last of 29 bodies from the wreckage of a hotel in central Italy a week after it was razed by an avalanche, the national fire brigade said on Thursday.

With the discovery on Wednesday night of the bodies of one man and one woman, everyone known to have been at the Hotel Rigopiano when it was flattened has now been accounted for.

Eleven people survived the disaster, which struck in the wake of heavy snowstorms and several powerful earthquakes on Jan. 18. Nine of them, including four children, were extracted shivering after spending days under the crushed masonry.

“When we managed to pull out the survivors it gave us hope and energy,” civil protection agency official Luigi D’Angelo said at an operation base in nearby Penne.

“We never lost that hope, all the way until the end, until we had searched the last centimeter of the hotel.”

Rescuers had to use pickaxes and heavy earth-moving equipment to shift snow and debris and break through the reinforced concrete roof.

Prosecutors have opened an investigation into the tragedy, which Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said would establish if anyone was to blame.

Many guests had wanted to leave before the wall of snow struck but were unable to do so because the access road was already blocked.

The opposition 5-Star Movement criticized cuts to local government funding and the scrapping of a rural police force. They said the national emergency prevention and response system had been ill-prepared.

“It isn’t the snow’s fault,” the 5-Star wrote on founder Beppe Grillo’s blog. “The failure of those who should have prevented this disaster and helped the communities in difficulty is clear to everyone.”

Gentiloni has promised to launch an emergency decree and add to reconstruction funds set aside after earthquakes tore through the heart of Italy last year.

(Reporting by Antonio Denti and Roberto Mignucci in Penne and Isla Binnie in Rome; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Richard Lough)

New Zealand government orders building repairs due to quake risks

New Zealand residents view damage from earthquake

By Charlotte Greenfield

WELLINGTON (Reuters) – The New Zealand government said on Wednesday it will require building owners to urgently fix hundreds of hazardous buildings due to concerns over the heightened earthquake risk following a deadly tremor in November.

The new rules affect about 300 buildings, mostly in the capital city of Wellington, and will cost around NZ$9 million ($6.51 million), half of which will be paid for by the government and local authorities, building minister Nick Smith told reporters.

The decision came after the state-funded science agency GNS Science predicted Wellington and the upper south island were eight times more likely than normal to be hit by a damaging quake in the next year.

Engineering industry bodies had asked for buildings with unreinforced facades such as verandas and chimneys in busy public spaces to be secured. Dozens of people were killed by rubble from similar structures collapsing in the 2011 Christchurch earthquake.

“Falling unreinforced masonry facades and parapets pose a major risk to people on the street during an earthquake. We saw the terrible harm that can be done when 39 people were killed by unreinforced masonry in the 2011 Canterbury earthquake,” Smith said.

The government ordered repairs to be carried out within 12 months and waived normal building consent processes, Smith said.

New Zealand’s central bank has estimated that repairs in the aftermath of the Nov.14 quake will cost up to NZ$8 billion, mainly in Wellington and the northern part of South Island.

($1 = 1.3820 New Zealand dollars)

(Reporting by Charlotte Greenfield; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)