Shudder .. The Cascadia subduction zone (also referred to as the Cascadia fault) is a subduction zone, .. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subduction_zone .. (image below) .. a type of convergent plate boundary that stretches from northern Vancouver Island to northern California. It is a very long sloping fault that separates the Juan de Fuca and North America plates. New ocean floor is being created offshore of Washington and Oregon. As more material wells up along the ocean ridge, the ocean floor is pushed toward and beneath the continent. The Cascadia Subduction Zone is where the two plates meet. Tectonic processes active in the Cascadia subduction zone region include accretion, subduction, deep earthquakes, and active volcanism that has included such notable eruptions as Mazama (Crater Lake) several thousand years ago and Mount St. Helens in 1980. Major cities affected by a disturbance in this subduction zone would include Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, and Victoria.
Strong earthquake rocks Mexico April 5, 2010 - 11:17AM
Wow, i just heard. This experience must have been so terrifying for many. Good news, is none have been hurt?
A USGS map of the location of the quake in Mexico.
A strong 7.2-magnitude earthquake rocked the north-western Mexican state of Baja California, and was felt in the southern part of the US state of California, the US Geological Survey reported this morning.
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The quake, which struck at 2240 GMT (8.40am), was at a depth of 32.3 kilometres and was located 26 kilometres south-south-west of Guadalupe Victoria, Baja California, and 64 kilometres south-west of San Luis, in the US state of Arizona, the USGS added.
A number of San Diego residents said the quake was the worst they had felt in decades.
Jess Ponting, an Australian working at San Diego State University, said he was at home when the quake struck.
"The main earthquake shook our apartment block and caused a panic up and down the street," Mr Ponting said.
"I cowered under my kitchen table on the third floor for about 45 seconds as the apartment shook violently and glassware rattled and ornaments and pictures fell off the walls.
"After the tremor finished, everyone spilled out on to the streets and started calling loved ones and figuring out what was going on."
Mr Ponting said he felt about five smaller aftershocks.
"The last one ... was the strongest and had us diving under the table again, though it was only short lived," he said.
A Qantas airline crew had just checked into the Marriott hotel in Torrance, a city in south-western Los Angeles County.
A crew member, who asked not to be named, said the hotel was evacuated when the earthquake hit.
"It was really severe and it went for what seemed like a minute," the crew member said.
He said he had experienced nine or 10 quakes in Japan and California. "This was definitely the most severe and prolonged," he said.
"The pool was like a cup of water splashing around."
Another San Diego resident, Erin, who did not want her surname published, said it was the worst earthquake she had experienced in the 20 years she had lived in the area.
"It wouldn't stop," Erin said.
"I thought after 20 seconds it would stop. It didn't.
"For the first time I got under the table and was crying.
"I thought my [two-storey] house was going to collapse as my house is old."
The tremor was forceful enough to move buildings in Los Angeles and San Diego in southern California, as well as in Arizona, the Los Angeles Times reported.
KABC Television in Los Angeles said high-rise buildings in that city and in San Diego rocked back and forth when the quake hit.
The report said Los Angeles City Fire Department crews were responding to people trapped in stalled elevators in the city, but there were no reports of serious damage, power outages or injuries in Los Angeles.
The sheriff's department in Yuma, Arizona, said it was responding to many building alarms but that it had no immediate reports of injuries.
The Yuma Sun reported that Fry's grocery store front-end manager Karla Favela said that, "a little bit of everything" fell down every aisle of the store.
"The first thing I thought of - have you seen the movie 2012? The part when the grocery store splits in half?"
In Mexico, the National Seismological Institute said it had no early reports of injuries or damage.
An agency official, Adriana Gonzalez, said that people had reported feeling the quake across a wide area of Baja California and Sonora states.
The USSG said it had reports that quake was felt as far away as Las Vegas, Nevada, about 460 kilometres from the epicentre as well as in Los Angeles, 360 kilometres away, and in Phoenix, Arizona (300 kilometres).
In the Phoenix area, Jacqueline Land said her king-sized bed in her second-floor apartment felt like a boat gently swaying on the ocean.
"I thought to myself, that can't be an earthquake, I’m in Arizona," she said.
"And I thought, oh my God I feel like I’m nine years old."
Mike Wong, who works at a journalism school in downtown Phoenix, said he was in his second-floor office getting some work done on Sunday afternoon when he heard sounds and felt the building start to sway.
"I heard some cracking sounds, like Rice Krispies," he said.
"I didn’t think much of it, but I kept hearing it, and then I started feeling a shake. I thought, ’You know what? I think that might be an earthquake."
Wong said the swaying lasted for "just a few seconds", and he did not notice any damage.
Powerful aftershocks
A series of powerful aftershocks shook the earth north of the US-Mexico border following the quake.
The US Geological Survey says three strong jolts including a magnitude-5.1 aftershock were felt in the Imperial County desert east of San Diego in the hour after the initial quake.
Magnitude-4.5 and magnitude-4.3 aftershocks came before and after.
There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.
New Zealand’s South Island Rocked by 7.0 Earthquake September 03, 2010, 5:08 PM EDT By Jeremy R. Cooke and Stefanie Batcho-Lino
(Updates power outages in the third paragraph.)
Sept. 4 (Bloomberg) -- A magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck New Zealand’s South Island, knocking out power, damaging roads and ripping facades off buildings in Christchurch, the country’s second-largest city.
The quake, about 55 kilometers (34 miles) west-northwest of the city and at a depth of 12 kilometers, ruptured sewer lines and water pipes and led to the closing of the airport, Radio New Zealand reported. At least two people suffered serious injuries, the public broadcaster said, citing Christchurch Hospital.
About 75 percent of the city was without power, Roger Sutton of electric utility Orion New Zealand Ltd. told the radio station. Facades of some buildings came down, scattering bricks and crushing cars, according to images posted on Fairfax New Zealand Ltd.’s Stuff.co.nz news website. Hospitals in the city are running on generators, and some buildings have sunk into the ground, Radio New Zealand reported.
“Oh, my God, there is a row of shops completely demolished right in front of me,” Christchurch resident Colleen Simpson told The Press, according to the local newspaper’s website.
The National Crisis Management Centre was activated to monitor the situation, said John Hamilton, director of Civil Defence & Emergency Management, in an e-mailed statement. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said the event didn’t pose a tsunami threat.
Aftershocks
New Zealand’s most powerful recorded earthquake occurred in January 1855 with an estimated magnitude of 8.2, according to GeoNet, an earthquake-monitoring site. It shifted vertically about 5,000 square kilometers of land.
Several aftershocks followed today’s 4:35 a.m. tremor, including one of magnitude 5.7 at 4:53 a.m., the U.S. Geological Survey said on its website. The strength of the first quake was revised to 7.2 and later to 7.0 from an initial report of 7.4 by the USGS.
Shaking was felt as far west as Greymouth, about 166 kilometers away, and in Dunedin, about 309 kilometers away, according to Radio New Zealand.
Streets in the downtown part of Christchurch were blocked off by police because of damaged buildings and debris, Radio New Zealand said. People were advised to conserve water, turn off power if a home is damaged, not go to the hospital unless it’s an emergency and refrain from using cellphones.
North Island
Damage was reported on the southern part of North Island, home to New Zealand’s capital of Wellington and Auckland, its largest city.
Christchurch is home to about 348,000 people, according to Statistics New Zealand. Mayor Bob Parker said on Newstalk ZB Radio the council was checking roads and seeing sewer problems.
Christchurch police official Mike Coleman told Radio New Zealand the quake caused “considerable road damage,” brought down live power lines and caused gas leaks. He advised residents to stay off the roads and check on their neighbors.
Christchurch International Airport is closed until at least 10 a.m. local time, according to its website.
The last quake to cause casualties in the nation hit in December 2007, when buildings in downtown Gisborne collapsed. Eleven people were injured and one died of a heart attack, GeoNet said.
GeoNet says it locates around 15,000 earthquakes in and around New Zealand each year. Most of these are small, though about 250 are strong enough to be felt.
--Editors: Sylvia Wier, Brad Skillman
To contact the reporters for this story: Jeremy R. Cooke in New York at jcooke8@bloomberg.net; or Stefanie Batcho-Lino at sbatcholino1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Sylvia Wier in New York at swier@bloomberg.net
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