Tag Archives: Earthquake

Aid trucks reach cut-off New Zealand town as quake bill mounts

Royal New Zealand Air Force personnel lead those stranded by an earthquake to an NH90 helicopter to evacuate them from Kaikoura on the South Island of New Zealand

By Charlotte Greenfield

WELLINGTON (Reuters) – A convoy of 27 military trucks reached the stricken New Zealand town of Kaikoura on Friday, five days after the seaside community was completely cut off by huge landslides caused by a 7.8-magnitude earthquake that killed two people

The convoy, which had been delayed by bad weather on Thursday, carried food and medical supplies and a team of civil engineers, officials said.

Helicopters have also flown provisions to the town from navy vessels anchored offshore since the quake struck early on Monday. More than 1,000 tourists and residents were evacuated from the small South Island fishing town, a whale-watching base that draws visitors from all over the world.

Relief efforts by sea, air and road will continue to supply the town of around 2,000 people as roads remain shut to the public. “Our people are going to be there for a very long time,” a spokeswoman for the New Zealand Defence Force said.

Not all tourists have left, and New Zealand media reported that a local lawmaker and motel owner had complained that some were staying to get drunk and party through the night for a “cheap holiday” as residents tried to clean up.

The quake’s cost could add up to almost NZ$12 billion ($8.4 billion), which could push the government budget back into deficit after two years of surpluses, analysts say.

“This week’s disaster struck in more lightly populated areas but damage to infrastructure has been severe,” said Citibank economists in a research note.

Prime Minister John Key said earlier this week the damage bill would be about NZ$2 billion($1.40 billion), although he cautioned that was only an early estimate. Finance Minister Bill English told parliament the damage was “relatively localized”.

Catastrophe modeling firm AIR Worldwide said the total for insurance losses – which excludes losses to land, infrastructure or cars – would be between NZ$1.15 billion and NZ$5.3 billion.

Most residential damage would be covered by the government-owned insurer, the Earthquake Commission, which is backed by NZ$4.7 billion in reinsurance, AIR Worldwide said in a statement.

In 2011, an earthquake in Christchurch, the South Island’s largest city, killed almost 200 people and required a NZ$40 billion rebuild.

Warships from Australia, Canada and the United States, in New Zealand for the Royal New Zealand Navy’s 75th anniversary, have been assisting with Kaikoura’s recovery.

This week’s quake damaged as many as 60 buildings in the capital, Wellington, on the North Island some 150 km (95 miles) to the northeast of Kaikoura.

That included serious structural damage to three relatively recently constructed multi-storey buildings, one of which engineers said would have to be torn down.

The government said on Thursday it would investigate why the newer buildings had been unable to withstand the quake.

($1 = 1.4278 New Zealand dollars)

(Additional reporting by Carolyn Cohn in London and Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengalaru; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

‘Utter devastation’ after major quake, aftershocks hit New Zealand

Landslide blocking road

By Charlotte Greenfield and Greg Stutchbury

WELLINGTON (Reuters) – A powerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake pummeled central New Zealand early on Monday, killing at least two people, damaging roads and buildings and setting off hundreds of strong aftershocks.

Emergency response teams flew by helicopter to the region at the epicenter of the tremor, which struck just after midnight some 91 km (57 miles) northeast of Christchurch in the South Island, amid reports of injuries and collapsed buildings.

“It’s just utter devastation, I just don’t know … that’s months of work,” New Zealand Prime Minister John Key told Civil Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee after flying over the coastal town of Kaikoura, according to Brownlee’s Twitter account.

He described landslips in the area as “just horrendous”. In a statement seen by Reuters, Key said of the likely damage bill: “You’ve got to believe it’s in the billions of dollars to resolve.”

Powerlines and telecommunications were down, with huge cracks in roads, land slips and other damage to infrastructure making it hard to reach the worst-affected areas.

A tsunami warning that led to mass evacuations after the original quake was downgraded after large swells hit New Zealand’s capital Wellington, in the North Island, and Christchurch.

Wellington was a virtual ghost town with workers ordered to stay away while the city council assessed the risk to buildings, several of which were damaged by the tremor. There were concerns that loose glass and masonry could be dislodged by severe weather hitting the capital, with 140 km per hour (85 mph) winds forecast.

Hundreds of aftershocks, the strongest a 6.2 quake at about 1.45 p.m. local time (0045 GMT), rattled the South Pacific country, fraying nerves in an area where memories of a deadly 2011 quake are still fresh.

Christchurch, the largest city on New Zealand’s ruggedly beautiful South Island, is still recovering from the 6.3 quake in 2011 that killed 185 people.

New Zealand’s Civil Defence declared a state of emergency for the Kaikoura region, centered on a tourist town about 150 km (90 miles) northeast of Christchurch, soon after Monday’s large aftershock.

Kaikoura, a popular spot for whale watching, appeared to have borne the brunt of the quake.

“Our immediate priority is ensuring delivery of clean water, food and other essentials to the residents of Kaikoura and the estimated 1,000 tourists in the town,” Brownlee said.

The Navy’s multi-role vessel HMNZS Canterbury was heading to the area, he said.

Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) said a 20-person rescue team and two sniffer dogs had arrived in the town. A second team was on standby in Christchurch, USAR said in a statement.

Police in the area around Christchurch reported 19 burglaries of homes and commercial properties after the quake as residents headed for higher ground.

“It is extremely disappointing that at a time when people are facing such a traumatic event and communities are coming together to support one another, there are others who are only interested in taking advantage,” Canterbury District Commander Superintendent John Price said in a statement.

TWIN QUAKES

Hours after the quake, officials said a slip dam caused by the quakes that had blocked the Clarence River north of the town had breached, sending a wall of water downstream.

A group of kayakers missing on the river was later reported safe.

New Zealand’s Geonet measured Monday’s first quake at magnitude 7.5, while the U.S. Geological Survey put it at 7.8. The quakes and aftershocks rattled buildings and woke residents across the country, hundreds of kilometers from the epicenter.

Geonet said four faults had ruptured, with one at the coast appearing to have slipped as much as 10 meters (33 feet).

Government research unit GNS Science said the overnight tremor appeared to have been two simultaneous quakes which together lasted more than two minutes.

New Zealand lies in the seismically active “Ring of Fire”, a 40,000 km arc of volcanoes and oceanic trenches that partly encircles the Pacific Ocean. Around 90 percent of the world’s earthquakes occur within this region.

Stock exchange operator NZX Ltd said markets traded normally, although many offices in the capital were closed. The New Zealand dollar initially fell to a one-month low before mostly recovering.

Fonterra, the world’s biggest dairy exporter, said some its farms were without power and would likely have to dump milk.

Prime Minister Key postponed a trip to Argentina, where he had planned to hold a series of trade meetings ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders’ summit in Peru this week, as he met disaster officials.

At least one of those killed was found in a house in Kaikoura that “collapsed like a stack of cards”, Kaikoura Hospital’s Dr Christopher Henry told Fairfax media. Two other people were pulled alive from the same building.

New Zealand media reported one of the pilots taking rescuers to the area was Richie McCaw, the recently retired captain of New Zealand’s world champion All Blacks rugby team.

“At one point, the railway was way out over the sea – it had been pushed out by (land) slips. It would not have been a nice place to be at midnight last night,” McCaw told the New Zealand Herald after helping fly the USAR team to Kaikoura.

(Additional reporting by Greg Stutchbury in WELLINGTON, Jamie Freed, Wayne Cole and Jane Wardell in SYDNEY; Writing by Paul Tait; Editing by Lincoln Feast)

Magnitude 6.2 quake strikes near Christchurch, New Zealand after earlier quake

Local residents Chris and Viv Young look at damage caused by an earthquake along State Highway One near the town of Ward, south of Blenheim on New Zealand's South Island,

SYDNEY (Reuters) – A strong new earthquake with a magnitude of 6.2 struck New Zealand’s South Island on Monday, the U.S. Geological Survey said, hours after a more powerful quake killed two people and damaged buildings along the east coast of the South Island.

The latest quake was initially measured with a magnitude of 6.8. It struck at about 1.45 p.m. local time (0045 GMT) at a depth of 10 km (6 miles), about 120 km (75 miles) northeast of Christchurch, the USGS said.

(Reporting by Swati Pandey; Editing by Paul Tait)

Magnitude 5.0 quake strikes near Cushing, Oklahoma

OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) – An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.0 struck near Cushing, Oklahoma, on Sunday damaging several buildings and prompting evacuations, but there were no reports of injuries, authorities said.

The quake was centered 2 miles (3.2 km) west of Cushing, a small city of about 8,000 people some 50 miles west of Tulsa, which is the location of intersecting oil pipelines and is considered a hub for crude oil shipment.

The oil and gas division of the Oklahoma Corporation commission said in a statement that they are in contact with pipeline operators, but so far there were no immediate reports of damage to pipelines.

Cushing authorities said the downtown area was being evacuated due to gas leaks and infrastructure inspection.

The quake was among the larger temblors felt recently in Oklahoma, part of a flurry of seismic activity geologists say is linked to energy production and is fueling growing concern.

People posting on Twitter, including some as far away as Kansas City, Missouri, reported that they felt the shaking.

Pictures on Twitter showed broken concrete that apparently fell from buildings in downtown Cushing and products littering the aisles of stores after being shaken from shelves.

Cushing High School canceled classes on Monday in order to assess damage, according to a message on its Facebook page.

Two smaller earthquakes, one at a 3.1 magnitude and the other at a 3.6 magnitude, rattled the area around Perry, Oklahoma, earlier on Sunday.

About two months ago a magnitude 5.6 quake, one of the strongest ever recorded in Oklahoma, shook the area.

Most earthquakes occur naturally, but scientists have long linked some smaller tremors to oil and gas work underground, which can alter pressure points and cause shifts in the earth.

In a report released last year, the Oklahoma Geological Survey said that the earthquakes were linked to the practice of injecting wastewater from oil production into the ground.

Some of that is related to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which involves injecting water, sand and chemicals at high pressure into rock to extract natural gas or other products. But the report said fracking is responsible for only a small percentage of the wastewater injected into wells in Oklahoma.

(Reporting by Heide Brandes in Oklahoma City,  Peter Cooney in Washington, Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento, Calif. and Chris Michaud in New York; Editing by Chris Reese and Michael Perry)

Earthquake hits already battered central Italy, no casualties

Firefighters inspecting Norcia, Italy after earthquakes

ROME (Reuters) – A strong earthquake hit the same area of central Italy on Thursday that has already been battered by a spate of recent tremors, but there were no reports of casualties or further serious damage.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) initially measured the quake at 5.0 but later revised it to 4.8. Its epicenter was in the Marche region, one of three areas hit repeatedly since August.

Nearly 10 hours after the latest quake, there were no reports of casualties, injuries or serious damage to buildings already weakened by previous tremors.

Earthquakes measuring 5.5 and 6.1 hit the area on Oct. 26, followed by a 6.6 magnitude quake on Sunday, the biggest tremor to strike Italy for 36 years.

The recent quakes have reshaped more than 600 square km (230 square miles) of land, lowering areas around the epicenter by up to 70 cm (28 inches), according to data released by Italy’s National Institute for Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV)..

Central Italy was hit by an initial earthquake on Aug. 24 that killed 300 people, most of them in the town of Amatrice. Since then, some 21,600 aftershocks have battered the region, the INGV said, driving most residents from their homes.

(Reporting by Philip Pullella in Rome and Sandra Maler in Washington; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

New earthquake rocks Italy, buildings collapse but no deaths reported

Coffins are seen in the collapsed cemetery of the village of Campi near Norcia, following an earthquake in central Italy,

By Isla Binnie

NORCIA, Italy (Reuters) – A powerful earthquake struck Italy on Sunday in the same central regions that have been rocked by repeated tremors over the past two months, with more homes and churches brought down but no deaths reported.

The quake, which measured 6.6 according to the U.S. Geological Survey, was bigger than one on Aug. 24 that killed almost 300 people. Many people have fled the area since then, helping to avoid a new devastating death toll.

With thousands already made homeless, a leading seismologist warned that the earthquakes could go on for weeks in a domino effect along the central Apennine fault system.

The latest quake was felt across much of Italy, striking at 7.40 a.m. (0640 GMT), its epicenter close to the historic Umbrian walled town of Norcia, some 100 km (60 miles) from the university city of Perugia.

Panicked Norcia residents rushed into the streets and the town’s ancient Basilica of St. Benedict collapsed, leaving just the facade standing. Nuns, monks and locals sank to their knees in the main square in silent prayer before the shattered church.

“This is a tragedy. It is a coup de grace. The basilica is devastated,” Bishop Renato Boccardo of Norcia told Reuters.

“Everyone has been suspended in a never-ending state of fear and stress. They are at their wits’ end,” said Boccardo, referring to the thousands of tremors that have rattled the area since August, including two serious quakes on Wednesday.

Italy’s Civil Protection unit, which coordinates disaster relief, said numerous houses were destroyed on Sunday in the regions of Umbria and Marche, but either they were deserted at the time or most of the residents managed to escape in time.

Civil Protection chief Fabrizio Curcio said no deaths had been reported and around 20 people were injured, none of them critically. He said it was too early to say how many more people had lost their homes.

Prime Minister Matteo Renzi promised a massive reconstruction effort regardless of cost and took advantage of the disaster to resume his frequent criticism of the European Union’s public finance rules.

“We will rebuild everything, the houses, the churches and the businesses,” he told reporters. “Everything that needs to be done to rebuild these areas will be done.”

He said he would have “no regard for technocratic rules” and would consider all money spent to make Italy’s schools and hospitals earthquake-proof to be outside EU limits on budget deficits.

Local authorities said towns and villages already battered by August’s 6.2 quake had suffered further significant damage.

“This morning’s quake has hit the few things that were left standing. We will have to start from scratch,” Michele Franchi, the deputy mayor of Arquata del Tronto, told Rai television.

Experts said Sunday’s quake was the strongest here since a 6.9 quake in Italy’s south in 1980 that killed 2,735 people.

Firefighters take care of a woman following an earthquake in Norcia, Italy,

Firefighters take care of a woman following an earthquake in Norcia, Italy, October 30, 2016. REUTERS/Remo Casilli

ARTISTIC LOSS

The destruction of the Norcia basilica was the single most significant loss of Italy’s artistic heritage in an earthquake since a tremor in 1997 caused the collapse of the ceiling of the Basilica of St Francis in Assisi, which is 80 km to the north.

The frescoed basilica, which is the spiritual, historic and tourist heart of Norcia, was built over the site of the home where the founder of the Benedictine order and his Sister St. Scolastica were born in 480.

The basilica and monastery complex dates to the 13th century, although shrines to St. Benedict and his sister had been built there since the 8th century.

Benedict founded the Benedictine order in Subiaco, near Rome. He died in 530 in the monastery at Monte Cassino, south of Rome, which was destroyed during World War Two. That monastery was later rebuilt.

A number of other churches were also ruined on Sunday, Italian media reported, including Norcia’s Cattedrale di Santa Maria, which was built in the 16th century, while the town hall belltower had deep cracks running through its walls.

However, most of Norcia’s homes appeared to have withstood the prolonged tremor, with residents praising years of investment by local authorities in anti-seismic protection.

In the nearby city of Rieti, patients were evacuated from a hospital to allow experts to check on structural damage, while hillroads across the region were littered with fallen rocks.

Sunday’s earthquake was felt as far north as Bolzano, near the border with Austria and as far south as the Puglia region at the southern tip of the Italian peninsula.

It was also felt strongly in the capital, Rome, where transport authorities shut down the metro system for precautionary checks. Authorities also toured the city’s main Roman Catholic basilicas looking for possible damage.

Italy sits on two geological fault lines, making it one of the most seismically active countries in Europe.

Its deadliest quake since the start of the 20th century came in 1908, when a tremor followed by a tsunami killed an estimated 80,000 people in the southern regions of Reggio Calabria and Sicily.

(Writing by Crispian Balmer and Philip Pullella; Additional reporting by Steve Scherer, Gavin Jones and Mark Bendeich; Editing by Mark Heinrich, Larry King)

Washington state ‘grossly’ unprepared for major quake: report

Skyline of Seattle Washington

(Reuters) – Washington state is grossly unprepared for a large earthquake and tsunami that may strike in the coming decades, putting it at risk for a humanitarian disaster, the Seattle Times reported on Sunday, citing a draft government report.

Anticipating a poor response to such a disaster, the state’s emergency managers will begin asking residents to stock enough food and other supplies to survive on their own for two weeks, the newspaper said.

The Pacific Northwest region was once thought to be a low risk for a massive earthquake, compared with its coastal neighbor California.

Researchers, however, have come to believe that an 8.0 to 9.0 magnitude temblor has shaken Oregon and Washington every 230 years or so. The last struck about 315 years ago, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, so one is overdue.

To prepare for that possibility, Washington officials organized a four-day exercise called “Cascadia Rising” in June, and the results were laid out in a draft report, the Seattle Times reported.

“The state’s current mindset and approach to disaster response is not suitable to a catastrophic scale incident,” the assessment says, according to a copy the newspaper published online.

The draft report recommends expanding the emergency authority of Washington’s governor and putting in place plans for mass sheltering and feeding, among other steps.

The state Emergency Management Division wants to spend $750,000 a year urging people to have emergency kits that would last up to two weeks, the Seattle Times said.

On the Olympic Peninsula, which is vulnerable to being cut off if roads and bridges are damaged, people may be on their own for twice that long, an official told the newspaper.

“What you have on hand when this occurs is how you’re going to survive,” said Clallam County emergency coordinator Penny Linterman.

(Reporting by David Ingram; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Italy’s Renzi says August quake caused at least 4 billion euros of damage

Italian Prime Minister Renzi addresses the United Nations General Assembly in the Manhattan borough of New York

ROME, Sept 23 (Reuters) – An earthquake that killed 297 people in central Italy last month caused damage worth at least 4 billion euros ($4.5 billion), Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said on Friday.

Renzi, who is looking for as much fiscal leeway as possible from the European Commission as he prepares his 2017 budget, has said he expects earthquake-related costs to be excluded from the EU’s budget deficit limits.

However, he has remained vague on whether those costs should include only the immediate aid and reconstruction effort for the towns affected, or also costs related to a broader project to make Italy’s buildings more earthquake-resistant.

“We are looking at a minimum of 4 billion euros ($4.48 billion),” Renzi told reporters on Friday in his first estimate of the extent of the damage in the mountain towns hit by the Aug. 24 quake.

He said all money spent on making Italy’s schools earthquake proof would be excluded from EU’s Stability Pact which sets deficit ceilings for the bloc’s members. It remains to be seen whether the EU Commission will agree with this approach.

The government, which will publish new economic forecasts next week, is expected to sharply raise its target for the 2017 budget deficit from the current goal of 1.8 percent of gross domestic product.

Brussels says it has granted Italy “unprecedented” budget flexibility in recent years and is concerned about Rome’s inability to bring down its public debt, the highest in the euro zone after Greece’s as a percentage of GDP.

Renzi has insisted that the EU’S fiscal rules should be relaxed, and has attacked his fellow leaders for failing to
acknowledge that austerity policies have been counter productive.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said on Thursday Rome had already been given 19 billion euros of “flexibility” in its 2016 budget, in comments widely interpreted in Italy as a signal he may be reluctant to grant much more leeway for next year. ($1 = 0.8919 euros)

(Reporting By Gavin Jones; Editing by Toby Chopra)

Earthquake activity has put Oklahoma at the center of oil wastewater debate

By Lenzy Krehbiel-Burton

TULSA, Okla. (Reuters) – One of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded in Oklahoma rattled a state where seismic activity has become a growing concern and sent tremors that were felt in six neighboring states, the United States Geological Survey said on Saturday.

The quake, which struck 14 km (9 miles) northwest of Pawnee in north-central Oklahoma at 7:02 a.m. CDT (1302 GMT), had a magnitude of 5.6, matching in strength a temblor that hit the state in 2011, the USGS reported on its website. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

The earthquake, which had a depth of 6.6 km (4.1 miles), could offer fresh ammunition to environmentalists concerned about the side-effects of oil and gas production, which has been blamed for a spike in minor to moderate quakes in the region.

Pawnee Mayor Brad Sewell said the tremor lasted nearly a minute, far longer than previous ones that lasted only a second or two.

Part of the façade of an early 20th-century bank building had fallen into a downtown street, he said. The mayor told Reuters he had yet to survey other parts of town, which has about 2,200 residents.

“We have had a spate of quakes over the last several years, but nothing like this,” he said. “It was a long, sustained quake.”

Oklahoma geologists have documented strong links between increased seismic activity in the state and the injection into the ground of wastewater from oil and gas production, according to a report from a state agency last year.

Oklahoma is recording 2-1/2 earthquakes daily of a magnitude 3 or greater, a seismicity rate 600 times greater than before 2008, the Oklahoma Geological Survey (OGS) said.

Last year the state recorded 585 quakes of magnitude 3 or greater, up sharply from 109 in 2013. Prior to 2008, Oklahoma averaged less than two a year.

The spike in earthquake activity has put Oklahoma at the center of a national debate over whether wastewater disposal from oil and gas production triggers earthquakes. The state’s economy depends heavily on energy production, accounting for one of every four jobs there.

The water at issue is extracted from the ground along with oil and gas, separated and re-injected into deep wells.

The drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” generates large amounts of wastewater. But the OGS report said fracking is responsible for only a small percentage of the total volume of wastewater injected into disposal wells.

Zachary Reeves, a seismologist with the USGS National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colorado, said the agency had received reports of the Oklahoma quake from South Dakota, Wisconsin, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas and Texas.

“It’s a relatively large quake for the area. The central U.S. doesn’t tend to get a lot of five-plus earthquakes.”

He said it was the third magnitude 5 quake in the state since 2011, and there were a couple of dozen or so 4s or bigger in Oklahoma last year.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson in Washington; Writing by Frank McGurty; Editing by James Dalgleish)

5.6 Earthquake Felt in six states shakes Midwest this morning

Oil Pump in Oklahoma

By Kami Klein

According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS) , a 5.6 earthquake rocked Pawnee, Oklahoma awake this morning,and from all reports is the largest quakes to hit Oklahoma. No casualties or damage has been reported at this time.

Posts soon after the event, from news media, facebook and twitter report the quake was also felt in Arkansas, Missouri, Texas, Illinois and Kansas.  An earthquake of comparable size last occurred in Oklahoma in about the same area in 2011 as well as a 5.1 earthquake on February 13, 2016.  

The center of the quake occurred about 9 miles northwest of Pawnee, which has a population of about 2,200. and 70 miles northeast of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Several aftershocks have followed ranging from magnitude 2.9 to 3.5 and the USGS is expecting more to occur.  

This will most likely continue more in depth controversy on the practice of disposing oil and gas field wastewater deep underground.  Oklahoma, a key energy producing state now rivals California in seismic events.  

So far this year the state has felt 2,503 earthquakes in 2016.  A statement on the USGS website states that without studying the specifics of the wastewater injection and oil and gas production in this area, they cannot conclude whether or not this particular earthquake was caused by industrial-related human activities.  They will continue to process seismic data in the following days and weeks that will help answer this question.