[Cody Dawg]

It's breaking right now on CNN.com and other sites.

Hope there isn't another tsunami. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

[Cody Dawg]

Good link to information.

Mar 28, 12:10 PM EST

Big earthquake hits off Indonesia island

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- A large earthquake struck off Indonesia's Sumatra Island in the Andaman Sea late Monday, and the U.S. Geological Survey said it was a major quake measuring a magnitude of 8.2.

Thai officials issued a warning of a possible tsunami, three months after a tsunami devastated parts of Indonesia and other countries in the region. The quake occurred at 11:09 p.m. local at a depth of nearly 19 miles, the USGS in Golden, Colo., said.

Japan's Meteorological Agency measured the quake at magnitude 8.5.

The magnitude-9 undersea earthquake, the world's biggest in 40 years, and the huge tsunami it sent charging across the Indian Ocean at the speed of a passenger jet killed more than 174,000 people and left another 106,000 missing.

More than 1.5 million people were left homeless in 11 countries.

[budster101]

I'm going to say a prayer that those people get out of harms way.

[Cody Dawg]

Yes, I hope like heck they are getting OUT right now.

Waiting to hear more information. All of money poured into rebuilding that area gone if another tsunami hits.

If you get any good info or links post them, will you?

[Ghoser777]

So how much does a drop of .5 effect how powerful the tsunami that will be released? If I remember right, the Richter scale is an exponential algorithm... although it might be logarithmic, but I'm leaning toward the former. So that should make the effects significantly less... but this region really doesn't need this again.

[starman]

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqinthenews/2005/usweax/

[nforcer]

> Monday, March 28, 2005 at 11:09:37 PM = local time at epicenter

That is not good.

[Ghoser777]

I just saw on fox news that they originally though the last earthquake was much lower than a 9 and had to change their evaluation many hours later... so this could be worse than an 8.2. Plus, it was a shallow quake and a vertical movement quake (or whatever you call it) - all the stuff you need for a tsunami

[ManOfSteal]

Talk. About. Bad. Luck!

Every 100 years or something like this is supposed to happen? Hmm...Vegas won this battle.

[starman]

It's logarithmic:

http://www.geo.mtu.edu/UPSeis/intensity.html

The Richter magnitudes are based on a logarithmic scale (base 10). What this means is that for each whole number you go up on the Richter scale, the amplitude of the ground motion recorded by a seismograph goes up ten times. Using this scale, a magnitude 5 earthquake would result in ten times the level of ground shaking as a magnitude 4 earthquake (and 32 times as much energy would be released).

Mike

[Cody Dawg]

Weird DP post. (Edited)



I just hope that people KNOW what is happening this time.

[starman]

"This earthquake has the potential to generate a widely destructive tsunami in the ocean or seas near the earthquake," the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said on its Web site.

[Millennium]

Originally posted by Ghoser777:
So how much does a drop of .5 effect how powerful the tsunami that will be released? If I remember right, the Richter scale is an exponential algorithm... although it might be logarithmic, but I'm leaning toward the former. So that should make the effects significantly less... but this region really doesn't need this again.

It's logarithmic. A full point either way equals one order of magnitude, so an 8.2 is somewhat better than 1/10th as powerful.

That's still big enough to do some major damage, and definitely big enough to cause a tsunami. However, it won't be able to cause as big of a tsunami as last time, and it's possible that it may not be big enough to reach the shore.

This said, there's going to be trouble. Although people should be able to reach higher ground without much trouble, the relief efforts from the last tsunami are going to be in trouble. Boats and ships can try heading further out to sea in hopes of reaching the wave while it's still small, and aircraft can simply take to the air, but buildings are going to be harder to deal with.

[von Wrangell]

BBC online has live coverage of what is happening.

Lets hope we are all overreacting

ps. it's been upgraded to 8.5 on Richter.

[wdlove]

Forewarned is forearmed, just hope that those in the area of danger will remove themselves to safety.

[SimpleLife]

Originally posted by wdlove:
Forewarned is forearmed, just hope that those in the area of danger will remove themselves to safety.

They started evacuation a few moments ago from the lower coastal areas.

[SimpleLife]

Update

Hundreds of buildings were badly damaged on Nias island, off the Sumatran coast, close to the epicenter of the earthquake. Dozens of people may be buried in the rubble, said Agus Mendrofa, deputy district head on the island.

"Hundreds of buildings have been damaged or have collapsed. People who were standing fell over," Mendrofa said. "We're not sure about casualties, but there may be dozens of people buried in the rubble."

"It seems this earthquake did not trigger a tsunami. If it had, the tsunami would have hit the coastline of Sumatra by now," said Prihar Yadi, a scientist with the Indonesia Geophysics Agency. "And if there's no tsunami on the coastline near the epicenter of the quake, there will not be one heading in the other direction."

The energy from the quake was generated in a southerly direction, said Eddie Bernard, a tsunami expert and director of the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, in an interview with CNN. That direction is away from area struck on Dec. 26.

[SubGeniux]

Terrible news. I'm just back from Indonesia, hope the folks there are ok.

[malvolio]

This is actually an aftershock from the December quake, though no less devastating because of that fact.

[sideus]

Originally posted by malvolio:
This is actually an aftershock from the December quake, though no less devastating because of that fact.

Then you could say all earthquakes are aftershocks?

[malvolio]

Originally posted by sideus:
Then you could say all earthquakes are aftershocks?

Um, no. Only the smaller ones that occur on the same faultline shortly after a big one.

[adamk]

Originally posted by malvolio:
Um, no. Only the smaller ones that occur on the same faultline shortly after a big one.

aftershocks release residual energy after a prominent earthquake. usually they decline in magnitude until all the stress is released on the fault. but the plates keep on moving and that the stress can rebuild... releasing stress on one fault plane can cause stress to build up on another, so quakes can act as a postive-feedback system.