Tag Archives: USGS

Huge quake strikes off Indonesia but tsunami warnings canceled

By Kanupriya Kapoor and Eveline Danubrata

JAKARTA (Reuters) – A massive quake struck on Wednesday off the Indonesian island of Sumatra, a region devastated by the 2004 Indian Ocean quake and tsunami, but initial fears of another region-wide disaster faded as tsunami warnings were canceled.

Indonesian and Australian authorities called off their tsunami alerts within two hours of the 7.8 magnitude tremor, though it was still unclear if the quake had destroyed any buildings or killed people in Sumatra.

A National Search and Rescue Agency official gave an initial report of some deaths, but later withdrew those comments.

“Up until now, there is no information about deaths,” said Heronimus Guru, the agency’s deputy head of operations.

Any rescue operation will be hampered by the dark, which falls early in the tropical archipelago.

There were no immediate reports of damage, but the shallower a quake, the more dangerous it is. The U.S. Geological Survey originally put the magnitude at 8.2, revising it down to 7.8.

The epicenter was 808 km (502 miles) southwest of the coastal city of Padang. It was 24 km (15 miles) deep, it said, after first putting its depth at 10 km.

“So far there have been no reports (of damage),” Andi Eka Sakya, head of the National Meteorological Agency, told TVOne. “In Bengkulu (in southwest Sumatra) they didn’t feel it at all.”

The National Disaster Mitigation Agency said a tsunami was unlikely.

“Local governments of the city of Padang and some other areas in west Sumatra have said there was no tsunami and the warning can now be revoked,” spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said.

President Joko Widodo was staying overnight at a hotel in Medan in North Sumatra and was safe, palace officials said. A Medan resident said he did not feel the quake.

Erwin, a resident of Mentawai, a chain of islands off Sumatra, told Metro TV: “I am at the beach currently looking to see any tsunami sign with my flashlight. There’s nothing. A few minutes have passed but nothing, but many people have already evacuated to higher places.”

On Pagai, an island off the west coast of Sumatra, resident Jois Zaluchu told Reuters by phone that there were no reports of damage or casualties there.

But Kompas TV said patients at hospitals in Padang were being evacuated. A TVOne reporter said Padang residents were panicking and there were heavy traffic jams.

Indonesia, especially Aceh, was badly hit by the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004.

A 9.15-magnitude quake opened a fault line deep beneath the ocean on Dec. 26, 2004, triggering a wave as high as 17.4 meters (57 feet) that crashed ashore in more than a dozen countries to wipe some communities off the map in seconds.

The disaster killed 126,741 people in Aceh alone.

Indonesia straddles the so-called “Pacific Ring of Fire”, a highly seismically active zone, where different plates on the earth’s crust meet and create a large number of earthquakes and volcanoes.

(Additional reporting by Randy Fabi, Agustinus Beo Da Costa, Gayatri Suroyo, Cindy Silviana and Heru Aspirhanto; Writing by Nick Macfie; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Mark Bendeich)

Powerful earthquake causes damage in southern Taiwan

TAIPEI (Reuters) – A powerful earthquake struck southern Taiwan on Saturday near the city of Tainan, toppling at least one apartment building and collapsing other structures although there were no immediate reports of deaths or serious injuries.

At least five aftershocks of 3.8-magnitude or more shook Tainan about half an hour after the initial quake, according to Taiwan’s Central Weather Bureau.

Taiwan’s Formosa TV showed images of police, firefighters and some troops in camouflage uniforms at the site of a collapsed residential building and said its reporters could hear the cries of some residents trapped inside.

The firefighters were hosing down part of the building to prevent a fire, while others used ladders and a crane to enter the upper floors.

The building appeared to have collapsed onto the first story where a child’s clothes were visible fluttering on a laundry line.

Taiwan lies in the seismically active “Pacific Ring of Fire” zone and it was struck by a magnitude 7.7 quake that killed more than 2,400 people in September 1999.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the latest quake, a magnitude 6.4, was centered 27 miles southeast of Tainan, a city of nearly 2 million people.

The quake was very shallow, at depth of 6.2 miles, which would have amplified its effects, the USGS said.

Taiwan’s China Post newspaper said on its website that more than one building collapsed in the quake.

“Collapsed buildings reported in Tainan, with rescue workers arriving on scene. The city government there has set up a level one emergency response center. Onlookers are urged not to block access to emergency crews moving into the area,” the newspaper said.

Tainan city’s fire department confirmed earlier that at least one building had partially collapsed and Liu Shih-chung, an official with the Tainan City Government, told Reuters the city had set up an emergency response center. Official information about the extent of damages from the quake was not immediately available.

According to the USGS, the last time Taiwan was struck by a quake of the same magnitude as Saturday’s was in April 2015, but that temblor was much deeper.

(Reporting by JR Wu and Tomasch Janowski; Additional reporting by Eric Walsh and Eric Beech; Editing by Sandra Maler and Tom Brown)

Quakes in Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas rise as global averages remain constant

The central United States saw a rise in seismic activity last year, seismologists said Monday.

Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas combined to witness 32 earthquakes of at least magnitude 4.0 in 2015, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said in a news release announcing last year’s global earthquake totals, nearly doubling the 17 quakes of that size that hit those states in 2014.

The news will hardly surprise residents of Oklahoma, which has seen a dramatic rise in quake frequency and magnitude since 2009. Officials have linked the surge to wastewater from oil and gas companies operating in the state, and regulators have taken steps to reduce its production.

Globally, however, the USGS said last year’s quake totals were “on par with prior year averages.”

The world usually sees about 14,500 earthquakes of magnitude 4.0 or greater and 18 earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 or greater every year, according to the USGS. Last year, those totals were 14,588 and 19, respectively, though the numbers may change pending a final review.

While earthquake totals might not have increased, the USGS reported they were far deadlier.

The organization said earthquakes killed 9,612 people last year, up from the 2014 total of 664.

Nearly 9,200 of them were killed in magnitude 7.8 and 7.3 earthquakes that hit Nepal in April and May, the USGS said. The first and more powerful quake on April 25 killed 8,964 people, and 218 died in the May 12 quake. Another 430 died in quakes in Afghanistan, Malaysia and Chile.

While Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas saw some powerful earthquakes, they didn’t see the most powerful one to hit the United States last year. A magnitude 6.9 earthquake off the coast of Alaska’s remote Unmak Island in July holds that distinction, according to the USGS.

However, Oklahoma’s trend of increased activity appears to be carrying over into the New Year.

The state has already seen seven earthquakes of magnitude 4.0 or greater in 2016, USGS data indicates. This year’s quakes include a Jan. 6 magnitude 4.8 earthquake near Fairview that is one of the strongest in the state’s history, according to Oklahoma Geological Survey records.

Oklahoma experienced just 21 earthquakes of magnitude 4.0 or greater in a 64-month stretch from January 2009 to May 2014, the USGS said in a news release at the time. That included a magnitude 5.6 quake that hit near Prague in November 2011, the state’s strongest on record.

Both the USGS and Oklahoma Geological Survey have cautioned the rise in Oklahoma’s earthquake activity increases the risk that the state could see an even bigger quake.

Oklahoma isn’t the only state where earthquakes pose a risk to the public.

The USGS reported last August that about 143 million people in the continental United States live in areas where they could be exposed to potentially damaging earthquake tremors. That was nearly double its previous estimate of 75 million people, published in 2006. The organization said the rise was the result of population shifts and a better understanding of seismic activity.

California, Washington, Utah, Tennessee, Oregon, South Carolina, Nevada, Arkansas, Missouri and Illinois are the states with the most people exposed to potentially damaging shaking, the USGS said.

Tremors in U.S. Northeast caused by sonic boom, not quake: USGS

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Residents from New Jersey to Connecticut reported feeling earthquake-like shaking on Thursday afternoon, but U.S. seismologists said the vibrations were likely the result of a series of sonic booms.

The U.S. Geological Survey, which monitors earthquake activity, said no quake had struck. The agency reported at least nine sonic booms had been recorded over 90 minutes starting at 1:24 p.m. near Hammonton, New Jersey, about 35 miles southeast of Philadelphia.

On Twitter, users said they felt several tremors, particularly in southern New Jersey.

It was not immediately clear what had caused the sonic booms, which are generated by airplanes traveling in the air faster than the speed of sound.

Some news reports suggested that military aircraft from McGuire Air Force Base, approximately 35 miles north of Hammonton, were the likely source.

But the McGuire base said on Twitter that its training ranges were clear on Thursday and that none of its aircraft are capable of creating sonic booms. In a subsequent post, the base said it was working with local authorities to determine a cause.

Seismologists at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York also confirmed that no earthquake had occurred in the region and that they had measured vibrations and low-frequency sound waves consistent with about eight sonic booms from approximately 1:20 p.m. to 2:40 p.m.

Won-Young Kim, a research professor at the observatory, said residents on the ground likely would not have heard the booms but would have experienced 15 to 20 seconds of shaking during each one.

The tremors produced numerous emergency calls to local police departments, some of which took to Twitter to ask residents not to flood their emergency lines with any more reports.

No damage was immediately reported.

Some Twitter users offered a lighthearted response. One person using the handle @VixenRogue quipped: “Aliens are invading New Jersey. What’s the best way to let them know the other 49 states are just fine with this?”

The reports came two days after residents in Charleston, South Carolina, said they felt tremors. The shaking was likely caused by sonic booms from F-18 fighter jets on a training run from a nearby military base, according to media reports.

Sonic booms are often mistaken for seismic activity, according to the USGS website.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Additional reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Andrew Hay and Sandra Maler)

Major earthquake in southern Alaska felt for hundreds of miles

JUNEAU, Alaska (Reuters) – A powerful 7.1 magnitude earthquake struck remote southern Alaska early on Sunday, unleashing shudders felt several hundred miles from the tremor’s lakefront epicenter at the far end of Cook Inlet from Anchorage, the state’s largest city.

No injuries were reported, but several neighborhoods in the town of Kenai – roughly halfway between the quake’s center and Anchorage – were temporarily evacuated after a gas explosion damaged four homes several hours later, a city spokesman said.

As of Sunday night, local utility company Enstar was still investigating whether the earthquake triggered a gas leak believed to have caused the blast, company spokesman John Sims said.

There were also reports of brief power outages in Anchorage, about 160 miles southwest of the epicenter, and cities immediately to the north and south.

The quake, initially reported at a 7.3 magnitude, struck at 1:30 a.m. about 30 miles east-southeast of Pedro Bay on the shore of Iliamna Lake, at the foot of a mountain chain just west of Cook Inlet, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) reported.

The quake was felt as far away as Whitehorse, the capital of Canada’s Yukon Territory more than 600 miles east of Anchorage, according to the USGS.

It was recorded 79 miles beneath the surface, a depth that helped keep damage to a minimum, said Dara Merz, a research technician with the Alaska Earthquake Center in Fairbanks.

“If you take into account how deep it was, that’s a lot of earth and rock that seismic waves have to work through to get to the surface,” Merz said.

The Fairbanks agency reported a series of aftershocks reaching magnitudes of up to 4.7, though Merz said even larger tremors could follow.

Alaska, a seismically active state, records anywhere from 80 to 100 quakes daily, most of them hardly ever noticed. One of the more powerful quakes to hit Alaska in recent years was a 7.9 magnitude temblor that struck beneath the ocean floor near the Aleutian Islands chain in June 2014, but it caused no injuries or major damage.

Following Sunday’s quake, jittery Anchorage residents and hotel guests who briefly fled their buildings took to social media sites to share their experiences. Some posted photos of stores with aisles littered by fallen merchandise knocked off shelves to the floor.

The quake produced no tsunami threat, according to the U.S. Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.

(Reporting from Juneau by Steve Quinn; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Sandra Maler and Tom Hogue)

Oklahoma earthquakes raise calls for restrictions on energy firms

OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) – Earthquakes in Oklahoma in the past week, including one of the strongest ever recorded in the state, have led to calls for the governor to make changes to oil and gas drilling regulations and reduce seismic activity scientists link to the energy industry.

Two large earthquakes were recorded in northwest Oklahoma on Wednesday, including a magnitude 4.8 quake. The quakes were part of a surge in seismic activity over the past several years.

Scientists have tied a sharp increase in the intensity and frequency of quakes in Oklahoma to the disposal of saltwater, a byproduct of oil and gas extraction, into deep wells. Oil fields have boomed in Oklahoma over the past decade thanks to advances in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling.

State Representative Richard Morrissette, a Democrat who has said the state’s Republican leaders are not doing enough to address the problem, will host a public forum at the Capitol on Friday to discuss the rash of earthquakes.

He wants the state to halt operation of injection wells at quake sites and do more to prevent them from causing quakes.

“No one in a position of authority is taking this seriously,” said Morrissette, who accused the state’s leadership of bowing to pressure from the energy industry.

Morrissette is hoping to build grassroots support to take on the oil and gas drilling industry, a powerful player for decades in the state and a major source of employment.

The industry is Oklahoma’s largest source of private capital spending and tax revenue and accounts for about 10 percent of the state’s annual economy, according to the Oklahoma State Chamber, which represents more than 1,000 Oklahoma businesses.

Although the quakes last week caused no major reported damage or injuries, they left many Oklahomans shaken. Firms providing quake insurance saw a surge in calls inquiring about coverage.

“We don’t have overall data on how much injection is going on in this area, but we attribute most of the earthquakes these days to deep injection of produced oil wastewater,” said Jerry Doak, director of the Oklahoma Geological Survey.

State leaders have been instituting changes, but critics said they have not gone far enough.

In response to the quakes, Governor Mary Fallin, a Republican, said last week that the state has been regulating disposal wells, taking some steps to limit their injection rate and depth of their injections.

“Science is ever-evolving as to what actually causes earthquakes. We know that disposal wells can cause earthquakes, but not all earthquakes. There are fault lines that are just natural in Oklahoma,” she told The Oklahoman newspaper.

Energy companies have also been responding.

Phillips 66 has overhauled how it plans for earthquakes, a sign U.S. energy companies are starting to react to rising seismicity around the world’s largest crude storage hub in Cushing, Oklahoma, site of many disposal wells.

The changes include new protocols for inspecting the health of crude tanks, potentially halting operations after temblors, and monitoring quake alerts.

(Reporting by Heide Brandes; Writing by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Magnitude 6.7 Earthquake Leads to Death, Destruction in India, Bangladesh

An early-morning earthquake rattled India and the neighboring countries of Bangladesh and Myanmar on Monday, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

The USGS reported the magnitude 6.7 quake was first felt at 4:35 a.m. local time on Monday. It was centered about 18 miles west of Impahl, the capital of the Indian province of Manipur.

The quake caused the deaths of at least 11 people in India and Bangladesh, Reuters reported, and injured approximately 190 more. According to Reuters, the earthquake knocked down portions of buildings in Impahl, while shaking was felt in a Myanmar city about 730 miles away.

The USGS said the region is known for seismic activity, and 19 magnitude 6.0-plus earthquakes have occurred within a 150-mile radius of Monday’s ground-shaker within the past 100 years. Most of the people in the region live in buildings prone to earthquake damage, the USGS said.

Reuters reported the latest quake knocked out power and phone lines, complicating rescue efforts.

Earthquakes Cause Minor Damage, Knock Out Power in Oklahoma

Early-morning earthquakes caused some damage in one Oklahoma community on Tuesday.

According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), a magnitude 4.3 earthquake occurred at 5:39 a.m. local time about five miles outside of Edmond, Oklahoma, one of the state’s most populous cities. A magnitude 3.4 aftershock followed nearby exactly 10 minutes later.

Edmond is located about 15 miles northeast of Oklahoma City.

The earthquakes caused about 4,400 customers in Edmond to lose power, officials wrote on the city’s Twitter page. However, crews restored service to every customer within about 90 minutes.

One Edmond resident shared a picture on Twitter showing a broken mirror inside a bathroom, though there weren’t published reports indicating the quake caused severe damage or injuries.

Another magnitude 2.9 earthquake shook the ground 17 miles outside of Fairview, Oklahoma, at 6:48 a.m., according to the USGS. Fairview is roughly 100 miles northwest of Oklahoma City.

The three earthquakes were the latest to hit the state of Oklahoma, which has seen a dramatic rise in seismic activity since 2009, according to the USGS. Wastewater from the oil and gas companies who operate in the state have been linked to the uptick, and officials at the regulatory Oklahoma Corporation Commission have implemented steps to reduce wastewater production.

However, the earthquakes continue.

USGS data indicates Oklahoma has experienced about 123 earthquakes of magnitude 2.5 or greater in the past 30 days. That includes dozens of quakes of at least magnitude 3.0. Before 2009, the USGS says the state traditionally only saw one to three magnitude 3.0 quakes a year.

Tuesday’s earthquakes came at a time when Oklahoma was still reeling from a powerful storm that brought ice, snow and flooding to the state, which the state Department of Health said led to at least 50 people suffering injuries. The entire state remains under a state of emergency, and the National Weather Service issued flood and flash flood warnings across eastern Oklahoma.

Close to 200,000 customers across Oklahoma lacked power on Monday afternoon, Governor Mary Fallin’s office said in a news release announcing the state of emergency. However, utility companies said their crews were busy restoring power to those who had been left in the dark.

The Public Service Company of Oklahoma reported about 17,000 customers were without power on Tuesday morning. Another utility company, OG&E, reported it had restored service to about 60,000 of its customers, though about 19,000 were experiencing outages. The Oklahoma Electric Cooperative reported approximately 54,000 people near Oklahoma City lacked power.

Magnitude 7.2 Earthquake Strikes in Tajikistan, Aftershocks Follow

A magnitude 7.2 earthquake occurred in a remote area of Tajikistan on Monday.

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) reported the quake occurred about 68 miles west of Murghob at about 12:50 p.m. local time. Several aftershocks occurred nearby, USGS data show.

NBC News reported buildings in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India shook as a result of the quake.

There were not any immediate reports of deaths, injuries or damage.

The earthquake occurred 18 miles underground near Sarez Lake in the Pamir Mountain range.

According to the USGS, earthquakes in that part of Tajikistan seldom lead to shaking-related deaths because the region is so remote. But they have sometimes triggered fatal mudslides.

The USGS website shows that eight other quakes of magnitude 4.5 or greater occurred in or near Tajikistan on Monday.

There were magnitude 4.8 and 4.6 aftershocks near Sarez Lake within three hours of the initial earthquake, according to USGS data.

There was also a cluster of four earthquakes further northeast closer to the city of Karakul. They ranged in magnitude from 4.8 to 5.4, the data show.

Further northeast, on the other side of Karakul, the data show there were magnitude 4.5 and 4.6 quakes near Tajikistan’s border with China.

Four earthquakes strike Oklahoma, including another 4.7

Four more earthquakes struck Oklahoma on Monday, including one of magnitude 4.7.

That’s according to the United States Geological Survey’s earthquake data.

The magnitude 4.7 earthquake came at 3:49 a.m. Central Time, the USGS said. It was about five kilometers below the earth’s surface and was centered near Medford, close to the Kansas border.

The Associated Press said there were no immediate accounts of damage, but KWTV News 9 reported the quake was felt across Oklahoma and it shook some of the state’s residents awake.

The Tulsa World reported this morning’s earthquake tied for the largest one in the state since 2011. It was matched only by a magnitude 4.7 earthquake located near Cherokee on Nov. 19.

A trio of smaller earthquakes followed.

A magnitude 3.0 quake occurred at 5:50 a.m. near Edmond, according to the USGS. An hour later, there were magnitude 3.1 and 2.7 earthquakes within 40 minutes of each other near Perry.

More than 5,000 earthquakes have already been recorded in Oklahoma this year, according to NPR. The oil and gas industries in Oklahoma produce a lot of wastewater, which the USGS has linked to the rise in earthquakes. State officials have introduced measures to limit wastewater.

Oklahoma is a key component of the energy scene in the United States.

It houses what an NPR report called North America’s largest commercial crude oil storage center, holding approximately 54 million barrels of oil in tanks the size of airplane hangars.

The facility is located in Cushing. While an official told NPR that the Oklahoma quakes have not caused any issues yet, the tanks weren’t constructed with any kind of major earthquake in mind.

That’s because the swarm in earthquakes is a recent phenomenon.

The number of earthquakes began to trend upward in 2009, and a USGS report found a 50 percent increase in the state’s earthquake rate from October 2013 to its May 2014 publication.

The report also said that raised the odds that a magnitude 5.5 quake would hit Oklahoma. A magnitude 5.6 quake hit Prague in November 2011, which is the state’s biggest quake on record.

A USGS research geophysicist told NPR he’s spoken to the Department of Homeland Security about the Cushing oil tanks. NPR also reported that officials fear that any earthquake damage to the Cushing facility could have significant implications in the United States energy market.