veD OF INDIA-BURMA TSUNAMI:.....DAY 3 REPORT + THE SCIENCE OF EARTHQUAKE THAT CAUSES MASS DESTRUCTION.....
Posted by Vishva News Reporter on December 29, 2004

DECEMBER 26, 2004:
INDIA-BURMA INDIAN OCEAN TSUNAMI:
DAY 3 REPORT

  • TOTAL: DEATH TOLLS: 61,000 and counting
    • SRI LANKA: 24,000+ Thousands were missing + an estimated one million were displaced and an estimated 250,000 were homeless
    •  South INDIA: 12,000+
    • NICOBAR ISLAND (India): 5,000+3000 missing
    • INDONESIA: 27,000+
    • THAILAND:   1,000+
    • BURMA: 100+
    • MALDIVES:    46 + 70 +missing
    • Africa 4,500 kilometers (2,800 miles) away:
      • SOMALIA (Africa): 100
      • TANZANIA: 10
      • SEYCHELLES ISLANDS: 3
      • KENYA: 1
  • Unicef warns that children could account for up to a third of the dead.

  • The magnitude 9.0 quake struck about 7 a.m. Sunday, December 26, 2004 (0000 GMT) and was centered about 100 miles (160 kilometers) off the coast of Indonesia's Sumatra island at a depth of about 6.2 miles (10 kilometers).
  • In all, at least 11 countries -- including the Maldives, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh and Tanzania -- were affected by the monstrous waves.
  • Relief workers now face a race against time to prevent still more people dying of disease and starvation.
  • 20,000 to 30,000 Swedish tourists were vacationing at Thai beach resorts when the disaster struck. Only six Swedes have been confirmed dead, but we think many, many more people have died.
  • 700 foreign tourists had been identified among the dead in southern Thailand and may rise to 2,000.
  • More than 2,000 Italians were vacationing in Sri Lanka, and about 1,500 on the Maldive Islands.
  • Those still missing include 1,500 from Sweden and 700 to 800 from Norway, 300 from New Zealand, more than 200 each from Denmark and the Czech Republic, 100 from Germany, 100 from Italy and 188 Israelis.
  • The UN has warned disease could double the death toll from Sunday's quake.
  • The massive sea surge in Asia has been described by relief experts as one of the worst natural disasters in recent history.
  • Asian governments and international agencies are reeling at the potential economic devastation left by the Asian tsunami and floods. Millions have been left homeless, while businesses and infrastructure have been washed away.
     
story.india.ap.jpg

People mourn at a temple south of Madras, India.

AP PHOTO/GURINDER OSAN
Parents grieve for their child, whose body washed ashore at Silver Beach in Cuddalore, in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, on Monday, Dec. 27.
 

Water from tidal waves washes through houses at Maddampegama, about 60 kilometers south of Colombo, Sri Lanka, on Sunday, Dec. 26.
 

 

Yesterday YOU must have enjoyed learning the science of TSUNAMI ....Continuing the PVAF tradition to be educated about science of this natural calamity....today PVAF presents the science of how, what and where of EARTHQUAKE....which in the above news reporting is a submarine earthquake located some 6 miles below the ocean floor....please click on the next line to enlighten YOURSELF......



Earthquake

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

 
Global earthquake epicenters, 1963-1998.
Global earthquake epicenters, 1963-1998.

An earthquake is a trembling or shaking movement of the Earth's surface. Earthquakes typically result from the movement of faults, quasi-planar zones of deformation within its uppermost layers. The word earthquake is also widely used to indicate the source region itself. The solid earth is in slow but constant motion (see plate tectonics) and earthquakes occur where the resulting stress exceeds the capacity of Earth materials to support it. This condition is most often found at (and the resulting frequent occurrence of earthquakes is used to define) the boundaries of the tectonic plates into which the Earth's lithosphere can be divided. Events that occur at plate boundaries are called interplate earthquakes; the less frequent events that occur in the interior of the lithospheric plates are called intraplate earthquakes.

Contents [hide]
[edit]

Characteristics

Earthquakes occur every day on Earth, but the vast majority of them are minor and cause no damage. Large earthquakes can cause serious destruction and massive loss of life via a variety of agents of damage including fault rupture, vibratory ground motion (i.e., shaking), inundation (e.g., tsunami, seiche, dam failure), various kinds of permanent ground failure (e.g. liquefaction, landslide), and fire or hazardous materials release. In a particular earthquake, any of these agents of damage can dominate, and historically each has caused major damage and great loss of life, but for most earthquakes shaking is the dominant and most widespread cause of damage.

Damage from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
Damage from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
Section of collapsed freeway after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.
Section of collapsed freeway after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

Most large earthquakes are accompanied by other, smaller ones, known as foreshocks when they occur before the principal or mainshock and aftershocks when they occur following it. The source of an earthquake is distributed over a significant area -- in the case of large earthquakes, over the entire planet. Ground motion caused by very distant earthquakes are called teleseisms. It is usually possible to identify a point from which the earthquake's seismic waves appear to emanate. That point is called its "focus" and usually proves to be the point at which fault rupture was initiated. The position of the focus is known as the "hypocenter" and the location on the surface directly above it is the "epicenter." Earthquakes, especially those that occur beneath sea- or ocean-covered areas, can give rise to tsunamis, either as a direct result of the deformation of the sea bed due to the earthquake, or as a result of submarine landslips or "slides" indirectly triggered by it.

[edit]

Intensity

A class of earthquakes known as silent earthquakes are thought to be caused by very slow slippage. They are of extremely low intensity but can last for days or weeks releasing as much energy as large earthquakes.

In the 1930s, a California seismologist named Charles F. Richter devised a simple numerical scale (which he called the magnitude) to describe the relative sizes of earthquakes, which has come to be called the Richter scale. Since Richter, seismologists have developed a number of magnitude scales. Most of the scales in use in the Western world (such as the moment magnitude scale) are mutually consistent to a sufficient extent that the term "Richter scale" is routinely used in reporting these numbers to the public. Other scales (and other ways of describing the size of earthquakes) are used in some non-Western countries, and by earthquake specialists. For example, the Japanese scale for measuring the force of earthquakes measures horizontal movement. The press sometimes mistakenly reports such values as "Richter magnitude", and this has given rise to public confusion.

 
A Shakemap recorded byA Shakemap recorded by the  that shows the instrument recorded  of the shaking of the Nisqually earthquake on , . the Pacific Northwest Seismograph Network that shows the instrument recorded intensity of the shaking of the Nisqually earthquake on February 28, 2001.
A Community Internet Intensity Map generated by the  that shows the  felt by humans by  of the shaking of the Nisqually earthquake on , .
A Community Internet Intensity Map generated by the USGS that shows the intensity felt by humans by ZIP code of the shaking of the Nisqually earthquake on February 28, 2001.

Earthquake effects are described in terms of intensity, a scale which attempts to quantify the severity of shaking at a given location. A number of intensity scales are in use, and there is a significant degree of consistency amongst them. The best known is the Mercalli (or Modified Mercalli, MM) scale, but the more consistent and analytical European Macroseismic Scale (EMS) is now increasingly widely used. In Japan the Japan Meterological Agency seismic intensity scale (JMA) is used.

[edit]

Causes

Some earthquakes are caused by the movement of magma in volcanoes, and such quakes can be an early warning of volcanic eruptions. A rare few earthquakes have been associated with the build-up of large masses of water behind dams, such as the Kariba Dam in Zambia, Africa, and with the injection or extraction of fluids into the Earth's crust (e.g, at certain geothermal power plants and at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal). Such earthquakes occur because the strength of the Earth's crust can be modified by fluid pressure. Finally, earthquakes (in a broad sense) can also result from the detonation of explosives. Thus scientists have been able to monitor, using the tools of seismology, nuclear weapons tests performed by governments that were not disclosing information about these tests along normal channels. Earthquakes such as these, that are caused by human activity, are referred to by the term induced seismicity.

[edit]

Preparation for earthquakes

[edit]

Specific fault articles

[edit]

Specific earthquake articles

See also List of earthquakes

[edit]

Related articles

[edit]

External links


Earthquake is a video game character. See Earthquake (video game character).


Earthquake is a 1974 movie starring Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner and others. See: Earthquake (movie).


 



There are 0 additional comments.

 

Send your news items to be posted to news@prajapati-samaj.ca.


If you have any questions or comments about this web site, send mail to Bhavin Mistry.    
© 1997-2003 Prajaapati Vishva Aashram Foundation.    
Site Design by Helios Logistics Inc.