A massive earthquake with a magnitude of 8.8 has hit central Chile, killing at least 78 people, ministers say.
The quake struck at 0634 GMT about 115km (70 miles) north-east of the city of Concepcion and 325km south-west of the capital, Santiago.
President Michelle Bachelet declared a "state of catastrophe" in affected areas and appealed for calm.
Tsunami warnings have been issued for Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand and Pacific island nations.
Alerts were also earlier issued for Antarctica and Central America.
Santiago airport has been closed and all flights cancelled until further notice, airline officials say. Flights are being diverted to Mendoza in Argentina.
Aftershocks
The earthquake is the biggest to hit Chile in 50 years.
Giving details of the latest casualties, Interior Minister Edmundo Perez Yoma said 34 of the deaths were in Maule, 13 in the Santiago municipality and four in Valparaiso.
"The death toll will continue rising," he said.
President Bachelet said: "People should remain calm. We're doing everything we can with all the forces we have. Any information [we have] we will share immediately."
She said a "wave of large proportion" had affected the Juan Fernandez island group, reaching halfway into one inhabited area.
She said if there were more aftershocks, people in coastal areas should go to higher ground.
Ms Bachelet warned people not to travel on roads in affected areas as a number of bridges were down.
Chilean officials said the worst affected town appeared to be Parral, close to the epicentre.
Chilean television said there had been a fire involving chemicals in the town of Colina, 20km north of Santiago, but that it was now under control.
Several hospitals have had to be evacuated in a number of areas, including Santiago, because of structural damage.
One resident of Chillan, 100km from the epicentre, told Chilean television the shaking there lasted about two minutes.
Other residents of Chillan and Curico said communications were down but running water was still available.
Many of Chile's news websites and radio stations are still not accessible.
Buildings in Santiago were reported to have shaken for between 10 and 30 seconds, with the loss of electricity and communications.
The US Geological Survey (USGS) said the earthquake struck at a depth of about 35km.
It also recorded eight aftershocks, the largest of 6.9 magnitude at 0801 GMT.
The USGS said tsunami effects had been observed at Valparaiso, west of Santiago, with a wave height of 1.69m above normal sea level.
One journalist speaking to Chilean national television from the city of Temuco, 600km south of Santiago, said many people there had left their homes, determined to spend the rest of the night outside. Some people on the streets were in tears.
A university professor in Santiago, Cristian Bonacic, said that this was a massive quake but that the cities seemed to have resisted well. Internet communications were working but not mobile phones.
Chile is highly vulnerable to earthquakes as it is situated on the Pacific "Rim of Fire", on the edge of the Pacific and South American plates.
Chile suffered the biggest earthquake of the 20th century when a 9.5 magnitude quake struck the city of Valdivia in 1960, killing 1,655 people.
Ruddy hell
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Heard on the news that Hawaii is preparing for a tsunami. Not "we think there's a possibility" but "a wave is on the way". From what I heard, a general alarm will be sounded at 6 am local and the first wave is expected at 11 am - the idea is to give time for people to move out of the way. Beach-side tourist hotels are being told to move people above the third floor if the can't evacuate them inland. They're hoping it only hits the side facing the quake, but apparently there is concern that the tsunami wave will wrap around the islands so the entire state is on alert.
Huh.
Which seems to imply the tsunami isn't theoretical but actually exists. California is also on warning. Presumably, so is pretty much everyone else in South America and a lot of Pacific (of course, my local news broadcast is going to mainly center on the US.)
That's aside from the earthquake damage which is, of course considerable.
Ugh.
I just hope the death toll in under 6 digits this time.
Of course, it's still very early in the event, information is sketchy, etc. Scenario subject to change with more facts coming to light.
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.Leonard Nimoy.
Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy
Have heard from two people on another message board who live in Hawaii. Civil defense there has said they're expecting a 12 foot (4 meter) tsunami to hit. Apparently, even before the official general alarm, stores are full of people stocking up on supplies and others are waking up friends and families and moving people inland.
I hope everyone else is taking prompt action, too.
And didn't Japan have a major quake of some sort yesterday? Who pissed off the Fire Gods? Did we forget to throw a virgin in a volcano or something?
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.Leonard Nimoy.
Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy
TSUNAMI BULLETIN NUMBER 008
PACIFIC TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER/NOAA/NWS
ISSUED AT 1346Z 27 FEB 2010
THIS BULLETIN APPLIES TO AREAS WITHIN AND BORDERING THE PACIFIC
OCEAN AND ADJACENT SEAS...EXCEPT ALASKA...BRITISH COLUMBIA...
WASHINGTON...OREGON AND CALIFORNIA.
... A WIDESPREAD TSUNAMI WARNING IS IN EFFECT ...
A TSUNAMI WARNING IS IN EFFECT FOR
CHILE / PERU / ECUADOR / COLOMBIA / ANTARCTICA / PANAMA /
COSTA RICA / NICARAGUA / PITCAIRN / HONDURAS / EL SALVADOR /
GUATEMALA / FR. POLYNESIA / MEXICO / COOK ISLANDS / KIRIBATI /
KERMADEC IS / NIUE / NEW ZEALAND / TONGA / AMERICAN SAMOA /
SAMOA / JARVIS IS. / WALLIS-FUTUNA / TOKELAU / FIJI /
AUSTRALIA / HAWAII / PALMYRA IS. / TUVALU / VANUATU /
HOWLAND-BAKER / NEW CALEDONIA / JOHNSTON IS. / SOLOMON IS. /
NAURU / MARSHALL IS. / MIDWAY IS. / KOSRAE / PAPUA NEW GUINEA /
POHNPEI / WAKE IS. / CHUUK / RUSSIA / MARCUS IS. / INDONESIA /
N. MARIANAS / GUAM / YAP / BELAU / JAPAN / PHILIPPINES /
CHINESE TAIPEI
In other words, pretty much the entire Pacific
AN EARTHQUAKE HAS OCCURRED WITH THESE PRELIMINARY PARAMETERS
ORIGIN TIME - 0634Z 27 FEB 2010
COORDINATES - 36.1 SOUTH 72.6 WEST
DEPTH - 55 KM
LOCATION - NEAR COAST OF CENTRAL CHILE
MAGNITUDE - 8.8
LAT - LATITUDE (N-NORTH, S-SOUTH)
LON - LONGITUDE (E-EAST, W-WEST)
TIME - TIME OF THE MEASUREMENT (Z IS UTC IS GREENWICH TIME)
AMPL - TSUNAMI AMPLITUDE MEASURED RELATIVE TO NORMAL SEA LEVEL.
IT IS ...NOT... CREST-TO-TROUGH WAVE HEIGHT.
VALUES ARE GIVEN IN BOTH METERS(M) AND FEET(FT).
PER - PERIOD OF TIME IN MINUTES(MIN) FROM ONE WAVE TO THE NEXT.
EVALUATION
SEA LEVEL READINGS CONFIRM THAT A TSUNAMI HAS BEEN GENERATED
WHICH COULD CAUSE WIDESPREAD DAMAGE. AUTHORITIES SHOULD TAKE
APPROPRIATE ACTION IN RESPONSE TO THIS THREAT. THIS CENTER WILL
CONTINUE TO MONITOR SEA LEVEL DATA TO DETERMINE THE EXTENT AND
SEVERITY OF THE THREAT.
A TSUNAMI IS A SERIES OF WAVES AND THE FIRST WAVE MAY NOT BE THE
LARGEST. TSUNAMI WAVE HEIGHTS CANNOT BE PREDICTED AND CAN VARY
SIGNIFICANTLY ALONG A COAST DUE TO LOCAL EFFECTS. THE TIME FROM
ONE TSUNAMI WAVE TO THE NEXT CAN BE FIVE MINUTES TO AN HOUR, AND
THE THREAT CAN CONTINUE FOR MANY HOURS AS MULTIPLE WAVES ARRIVE.
FOR ALL AREAS - WHEN NO MAJOR WAVES ARE OBSERVED FOR TWO HOURS
AFTER THE ESTIMATED TIME OF ARRIVAL OR DAMAGING WAVES HAVE NOT
OCCURRED FOR AT LEAST TWO HOURS THEN LOCAL AUTHORITIES CAN ASSUME
THE THREAT IS PASSED. DANGER TO BOATS AND COASTAL STRUCTURES CAN
CONTINUE FOR SEVERAL HOURS DUE TO RAPID CURRENTS. AS LOCAL
CONDITIONS CAN CAUSE A WIDE VARIATION IN TSUNAMI WAVE ACTION THE
ALL CLEAR DETERMINATION MUST BE MADE BY LOCAL AUTHORITIES.
BULLETINS WILL BE ISSUED HOURLY OR SOONER IF CONDITIONS WARRANT.
THE TSUNAMI WARNING WILL REMAIN IN EFFECT UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.
THE WEST COAST/ALASKA TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER WILL ISSUE PRODUCTS
FOR ALASKA...BRITISH COLUMBIA...WASHINGTON...OREGON...CALIFORNIA.
So - those of you living near the Pacific, even far away from Chile - keep an eye on things, m'kay?
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.Leonard Nimoy.
Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy
Shit, man. I sure hope as hell that my island of Cebu, which is in the center of the Philippine archipelago, will be kept mostly safe from these tsunami waves. Goddamn it. I wonder if my house is above, or below, sea level...
"DO YOU WORSHIP HOMOSEXUALS?" - Curtis Saxton (source) shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN! Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people - PeZook Shroom, I read out the stuff you write about us. You are an endless supply of morale down here. :p - an OWS street medic Pink Sugar Heart Attack!
JAXA Astronaut (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Soichi Noguchi has been sending some photos of Chile photos taken onboard the ISS as it comes into view of the area. The photos can be seen at his Twitter page. The photos are fairly big and I don't have time to re-size an example right now, but you don't need to have a Twitter account to look at them. Expect more and better photos from this source and others, of course.
Shits and giggles all round. My city gets hit 09:05 local.
Via money Europe could become political in five years" "... the current communities should be completed by a Finance Common Market which would lead us to European economic unity. Only then would ... the mutual commitments make it fairly easy to produce the political union which is the goal"
TV Chile reported that a 15-storey building collapsed in the hardest-hit city of Concepcion, where buildings caught fire, major highway bridges collapsed and cracks opened up in the streets. Cars turned upside down lay scattered across one damaged bridge.
Residents huddled in streets full of rubble of masonry and glass from destroyed homes. Many were terrified by powerful aftershocks and desperately trying to call friends and family.
Chilean President-elect Sebastian Pinera said 122 people had been killed and the death toll could climb higher.
Tsunami warnings were posted around the Pacific, including the U.S. state of Hawaii, Japan and Russia.
Telephone and power lines were down in much of central Chile, making it difficult to assess the full extent of the damage close to the epicenter.
Chile is the world's No. 1 copper producer, and the quake halted operations at two major mines.
"Never in my life have I experienced a quake like this, it's like the end of the world," one man told local television from the city of Temuco, where the quake damaged homes and forced staff to evacuate the regional hospital.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake struck 70 miles northeast of Concepcion at a depth of 22 miles at 3:34 a.m. (1:34 a.m. EST).
The capital Santiago, about 200 miles north of the epicenter, was also badly hit. The international airport was closed for at least 24 hours as the quake destroyed passenger walkways and shook glass out of doors and windows.
Chile's Codelco, the world's largest copper producer, suspended operations at its El Teniente and Andina mines, but reported no major damage and said it expected the mines to be up and running in the "coming hours."
Production was halted at the Los Bronces and El Soldado copper mines, owned by Anglo American Plc, but Chile's biggest copper mine, Escondida, was operating normally.
Chile produces about 34 percent of world supply of copper, which is used in electronics, cars and refrigerators.
TSUNAMI
President Michelle Bachelet said a huge wave hit the Juan Fernandez islands. Radio stations reported serious damage on the archipelago, where Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk was marooned in the 18th Century inspiring the novel Robinson Crusoe.
Bachelet, who flew over the worst-affected area, said residents were also being evacuated from coastal areas of Chile's remote Easter Island, a popular tourist destination in the Pacific famous for its towering Moai stone statues.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a Pacific-wide tsunami warning for countries in Latin America, and as far away as the U.S. state of Hawaii as well as Japan, Russia, Philippines, Indonesia and the South Pacific. French Polynesia was also put on alert.
"Chile probably got the brunt force of the tsunami already. So probably the worst has already happened in Chile," said Victor Sardina, geophysicist at the warning center.
"The tsunami was pretty big too. We reported some places around 8 feet. And it's quite possible it would be higher in other areas," he added.
An earthquake of magnitude 8 or over can cause "tremendous damage," the USGS says. The January 12 quake that devastated Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince was measured as magnitude 7.0.
Bachelet urged people to stay calm and to remain at home to avoid road accidents. "With a quake of this size we undoubtedly can't rule out more deaths and probably injuries," she said.
FLAMES, LOOTING
Local television showed a building in flames in Concepcion, one of Chile's largest cities with around 670,000 inhabitants. Some residents looted pharmacies and a collapsed grains silo, hauling off bags of wheat, television images showed.
Broken glass and chunks of concrete and brick were strewn across roads and several strong aftershocks rattled jittery residents in the hours after the initial quake.
In the moments after the quake, people streamed onto the streets of the Chilean capital hugging each other and crying.
"My house is completely destroyed, everything fell over ... it has been totally destroyed. Me and wife huddled in a corner and after hours they rescued us," said one elderly man in central Santiago.
There were blackouts in parts of Santiago. Emergency officials said buildings in the historic quarters of two southern cities had been badly damaged and local radio said three hospitals had partially collapsed.
In 1960, Chile was hit by the world's biggest earthquake since records dating back to 1900. The 9.5 magnitude quake devastated the south-central city of Valdivia, killing 1,655 people and sending a tsunami which battered Easter Island 2,300 miles off Chile's Pacific seaboard and continued as far as Hawaii, Japan and the Philippines.
Saturday's quake shook buildings as far away as Argentina's Andean provinces of Mendoza and San Juan. A series of strong aftershocks rocked Chile's coastal region from Valdivia in the south to Valparaiso, about 500 miles to the north.
The United Nations and the White House said they were closely monitoring the situation in Chile and the potential threat of tsunamis in the Pacific.
A State Department official said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was being kept apprised of the situation in Chile, which she is due to visit on Tuesday on a Latin American tour.
This is pre-WWII. You can sort of tell from the sketch style, from thee way it refers to Japan (Japan in the 1950s was still rebuilding from WWII), the spelling of Tokyo, lots of details. Nothing obvious... except that the upper right hand corner of the page reads "November 1931." --- Simon_Jester
So I'm kinda curious: what exactly is someone on Tuvalu supposed to do when they get a tsunami warning? Flee inland to the island's highest point (3m)?
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Master of Ossus wrote:So I'm kinda curious: what exactly is someone on Tuvalu supposed to do when they get a tsunami warning? Flee inland to the island's highest point (3m)?
You got it.
Via money Europe could become political in five years" "... the current communities should be completed by a Finance Common Market which would lead us to European economic unity. Only then would ... the mutual commitments make it fairly easy to produce the political union which is the goal"
Does Tuvalu have enough land mass to slow the water sufficiently down? But to give an answer to the question: a Tsunami is not dangerous (often even not noticable) when you are out on the sea. I imagine there are quite a few fishing boats on Tuvalu, which one could use to wait it out and only return to the shore after the Tsunami has hit. Though the strong currents could make that difficult/dangerous, too.
This is pre-WWII. You can sort of tell from the sketch style, from thee way it refers to Japan (Japan in the 1950s was still rebuilding from WWII), the spelling of Tokyo, lots of details. Nothing obvious... except that the upper right hand corner of the page reads "November 1931." --- Simon_Jester
Banks Peninsula, Christchurch: Low lying areas being evacuated for 24hrs.
Via money Europe could become political in five years" "... the current communities should be completed by a Finance Common Market which would lead us to European economic unity. Only then would ... the mutual commitments make it fairly easy to produce the political union which is the goal"
Yep, it's bad. This was stronger than the Haitian quake, so it did a lot of damage even where construction was better than in Haiti.
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.Leonard Nimoy.
Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy
Is it wrong of me to be hoping for videos of Any Tsunami that comes ashore so I can go "OH Cool!" ?
Praying is another way of doing nothing helpful
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56 aftershocks and almost all of them between 5 & 6, one as high as 6.9...
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CNN has a link on the front page right now, "LIVE LOCAL COVERAGE FROM KHON AND KITV" showing live, local coverage from Hawaii. It's a pop-up so I can't link it directly.
Edit: Sorry, it's right on the front page in the middle. The pop-up seems to be coverage from Chile and such.
Crossroads Inc. wrote:Is it wrong of me to be hoping for videos of Any Tsunami that comes ashore so I can go "OH Cool!" ?
Well, considering we have at least a member or two so far that are going to be affected by this, and there might be more around the board, this might not be the best thing to post here right now.
Take a page from the Book of the Forum Lurker, and just say stuff like this silently to yourself.
"A mind is like a parachute. It only works when it is open."
-Sir James Dewar
CaptainChewbacca wrote:The waves in hawaii are coming in low and easy. Minimal damage if any.
That's good to hear. The waves are supposed to hit my town in 20+ minutes and I live at the end of a funnel that tends to make tsunamis worse. We dusted off our preparations during the Alaska quake so emergency personnel were probably prepared to deal with whatever came but its good to know it won't be needed.
"
- PeZook
