Earthquakes

Last night I looked at the earthquake map and saw that within that hour a 7.8 earthquake had struck Indonesia, off Banda Aceh.  I checked for news and all I could find was the report that it had happened. No information.  It was late at night here but the middle of the day there.  This morning I saw they cancelled the tsunami warning etc, but there is no news of damage yet.

Last week Mexicali got hit by a 7.3 quake.  There have been 806 quakes registered in that area in the past two weeks.  From first hand experience I can say a 7.3 quake is mind boggling.  In 1992 we were in Joshua Tree National Park, five miles from the epicenter Landers 7.3 quake.  It struck at 4:50am.  Half asleep we hopped and crawled our way out of the house, dodging falling furniture, wall hangings, etc.  The earth is moving underneath you and you feel seasick.  You are not in control of where you put your two feet.  When we finally got outside it was a scene from a La Bamba video. The cars were literally bouncing up and down and back and forth.  From our vantaget point, we could see the dust rise off the desert and hear the quake rolling closer.  It was fascincating, bizarre, and of course scary. The house was on a cement base which cracked along the entire diagonal of the property.  But we were ok.  Several aftershocks and hours later, we headed into Los Angeles to continue on with our vacation.  After a big adrenaline filling earthquake, your mind is naturally just waiting for the next one to hit.  This anxious waiting takes place for a while.  Imagine being near the BC - CA border right now, having earthquakes every few hours...wondering if this one more shake will do in your house...(By the way as I was writing this another quake, small, 3.1, woke Mexicali.)

I like to watch the earthquake map to watch trends.  Although I don't know that much about geology, I find it fascinating all the same.  I can tell you that the average number of earthquakes on the worldwide earthquake list for two weeks is usually around 200.  If you click on the earthquake page, you will see that in the past two weeks there have been over 900 earthquakes sizable enough to mention.

The Yucatán has its hazards, but earthquake is not one of them.  There are no faults presently anywhere near us.  That's not to say the earth's crust couldn't create new fault lines, especially when so many are active at this time.  But again, outside my league of knowledge.  I just thought it was interesting.