7.9 Quake Hits Samoa

[Kodiak]

Right now that's the banner on CNN. More to come shortly. I hope there's not another Tsunami like last time.

[Kodiak]

link to cnn story

An earthquake with a magnitude of 7.9 struck in the Samoan Islands region Tuesday, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The temblor generated a nearly 10-foot (3-meter) tsunami -- measured from crest to trough -- according to preliminary data, said Chip McCreery, the director of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Ewa Beach, Hawaii.

A tsunami warning was in effect for American Samoa, Samoa, Cook Islands, Tonga and Fiji, among others in the South Pacific archipelago, according to a bulletin from the center.

A tsunami watch was issued for islands farther from the epicenter, including Hawaii and Papua New Guinea.

Officials were determining whether the tsunami could reach Hawaii, the center said.

The quake is not expected to generate a tsunami along the west coast of the United States or Canada, according to the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center.

Further details were not immediately available.

There were no immediate reports of damage.

The quake was recorded at 6:48 a.m. (1:28 p.m. ET) at a depth of about 7.4 miles (11.9 km), the USGS reported.

Hopefully that's the end of it, though I find it impressive that the Tsunami could potentially reach Hawaii.

[weemadando]

ABC News Breakfast is also reporting that there was a confirmation that a tsunami was created by the quake. New Zealand is also on the list of places on alert.

[Bluewolf]

Crap, hopefully this wont be anything like the 2005 Tsunami and the body count will be far far less. This is the last thing people need. It does make me wonder though if Tsunami's will be more prepared for by some countries if they keep continuing on like this .

[CaptainChewbacca]

Its looking a fair bit smaller, only a 10-15 foot surge coming inland about 100 yards. NZ probably had at least an hour's warning to evacuate coastal areas before it hit.

[hongi]

It's still a bad one.

PAGO PAGO, American Samoa – A powerful Pacific Ocean earthquake spawned towering tsunami waves that swept ashore on Samoa and American Samoa early Tuesday, flattening villages, killing dozens of people and leaving several workers missing at devastated National Park Service facilities.

Cars and people were swept out to sea by the fast-churning water as survivors fled to high ground, where they remained huddled hours later. Signs of devastation were everywhere, with a giant boat getting washed ashore and coming to rest on the edge of a highway and floodwaters swallowing up cars and homes.

[Broomstick]

I heard a phoned-in report from Samoa on the TV this morning saying that people did heed the tsunami warnings and do their best to head for higher ground or higher floors in buildings, but after the first surge some people went back to assist those who hadn't reached higher ground or had been injured, only to be caught in a stronger second surge. Unconfirmed eye witness report.

I expect the death and damage toll will rise over the next few days. It will take that long for the destruction to be evaluated given the usual confusion and communication problems of a natural disaster.

[Broomstick]

Death toll is up to 111 in the various Somoan islands and Tonga, with reports of some villages entirely swept out to sea.

I also have heard the quake reported at an 8.0 but right now I don't expect complete consistency in reports so soon after such an event.

We're starting to get pictures:


Yes, that's a boat inside of a building.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Yeah, revising upwards isn't uncommon for an earthquake. I expect the final number will be closer to 8.2.

[Kodiak]

Seems like too much of a coincidence to be un-related.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (CNN) -- A major earthquake in Indonesia killed at least 75 people Wednesday, according to a Red Cross disaster report, citing an official report from the country's vice president.

Earlier in the day an official said the quake toll was at least 21, with hundreds more injured.

Thousands may be trapped by collapsed buildings and houses, said Rustam Pakaya, the head of Ministry of Health's crisis center.

He said 75 people were seriously injured.

The quake caused widespread power and phone outages, making it difficult to assess the scope of the damage.

It struck at around 5 p.m. local time, about 33 miles (53 kilometers) from Padang, the capital city of West Sumatra. Padang is home to more than 800,000 people.

The earthquake, which had a magnitude of 7.6, according to the U.S Geological Survey, caused widespread power and phone outages, making it difficult for authorities and aid organizations to evaluate damage.

"The situation is quite devastating," said Amelia Merrick, the operations director for World Vision Indonesia.

"Bridges have gone down, phone lines are in total disrepair; it's difficult for us to assess the situation," she said. The organization had said it would send assessment teams to the area Thursday morning.

"We know there's no electricity tonight... many of the families will be spending the night outdoors, in pitch black. I'm very afraid of what might happen next," she said, referring to the possibility of aftershocks.

State-run Antara news agency cited Pakaya as saying he had received reports that part of a hospital had collapsed and that people were buried under the debris.

The earthquake was felt in nearby cities, such as Medan and Gengkulu, where people panicked and ran outside in search of higher ground, fearing a tsunami.

But it was also felt as far away as Singapore and Malaysia.

"I did feel the tremor in office today somewhere between 5 - 6 p.m.," said Ratna Osman, who works in a single-story office building in Petaling Jaya, just outside Malaysia's capital Kuala Lumpur.

"I asked [a co-worker] if there's an earthquake somewhere -- either that or I was hallucinating."

"At first, I thought the chair I was sitting on had a screw loose or something," Osman said.

The region is accustomed to earthquakes, and locals have been taught to identify safe places in case of a tsunami, according to Sean Granville-Ross, the Mercy Corps country director for Indonesia. "We hope that preparation is now paying off," he said.

But if many homes have been destroyed, people may be spending the night with no shelter, he said.

Several buildings were damaged, Metro TV reported, and people were seen running out of their homes and toward the hills. One employee of a private company in Jalan Ahmad Yani, told Antara news agency that "everybody panicked with some shouting 'earthquake.'"

TVOne pictures from the scene showed people milling around outside in the city.

Phone lines were apparently down in many parts of Padang. Indonesia's Tempo Interactive, a media outlet based in Jakarta, had trouble reaching its correspondent in the West Sumatra city, according to journalist Purwani Diyah Prabandari.

"I hope it's just the cell phone connection," Prabandari told CNN.

Indonesians trying to find out more about the quake flooded the Internet, including Twitter. Some expressed concern for relatives and friends in Padang.

"Dear God, please send down your angels to hug and protect my grandpa in Padang," said one Twitter post.

The Web site for one of Indonesia's main newspapers, The Jakarta Globe, crashed for a while, partly as a result of the heavy traffic from people trying to find out about the quake, the paper said in a Twitter post.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued a tsunami watch for Indonesia, India, Thailand and Malaysia, but canceled it soon after.

The temblor did generate a tsunami just under one foot high, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said.

On Tuesday, a magnitude 8.0 quake-triggered tsunami killed at least 111 people in the Samoan islands and Tonga. Read latest news on the Samoa quake and tsunami

The tsunami waves swept across a wide swath of the Pacific Ocean, killing dozens and flattening or submerging villages. The dead included 22 in American Samoa, 82 in Samoa and seven in Tonga.

Officials warned that the death toll could rise as rescue workers start to reach outlying villages and discover new casualties.

The U.S. Geological Survey declined to say whether the two quakes were linked.

"The simple answer is we can't speculate on a connection," Carrieann Bedwell of the USGS told CNN. "Both are in highly seismic areas."

The epicenters of the two temblors are about 4,700 miles (7,600 km) apart.

Now the banner on CNN says 75 killed. What's going on over there?

[CmdrWilkens]

Per CNN the death toll is currently at 22 in American Samoa, 82 in Samoa, and 7 dead in Tonga with 3 missing but those numbers are with one end of American Samoa cut off as the bridge connecting to it was washed away.

[CaptainChewbacca]

The quake in indonesia seems to be too far away from the samoa incident to be directly linked.

[Bluewolf]

Shit, the body count starts to go up. I hope other areas are not effected by this. I actually remember the whole aid effort for the 2005 Tsunami, even in our school we had charity boxes etc.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

The quake in indonesia seems to be too far away from the samoa incident to be directly linked.

Isn't there an extremely controversial theory which proposes that earthquakes can trigger other earthquakes along a fault line? Or that slippage is more systematically linked so that one earthquake along a fault line may cause another at its other end, and so on? That made sense to me from a strictly theoretical standpoint but that was in the context of the Boxing Day earthquake and the preceding one far off the coast of Australia which hadn't done any damage.

[CaptainChewbacca]

The quake in indonesia seems to be too far away from the samoa incident to be directly linked.

Isn't there an extremely controversial theory which proposes that earthquakes can trigger other earthquakes along a fault line? Or that slippage is more systematically linked so that one earthquake along a fault line may cause another at its other end, and so on? That made sense to me from a strictly theoretical standpoint but that was in the context of the Boxing Day earthquake and the preceding one far off the coast of Australia which hadn't done any damage.

Its more than a theory, its true. However, Indonesia and Samoa are on separate fault systems.

[Xisiqomelir]

Singaporean posters + Anithyng, any tremors near you? A bunch of posters on Sammyboy said they could feel the Sumatra one.

[AniThyng]

Yeah, we felt it across Malaysia's west coast. I driving at the time so I personally didn't feel it, but I can confirm that many highrises, including relatively low ones <10 floors (like my office) were noticably swaying.

Edit: also, http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?fi ... sec=nation

Capt. Chewbacca, do you think that there will be any chance in future that instead of 'merely' tremors Malaysia could outright suffer an earthquake of sufficient magnitude to cause damage to buildings? Given the amount of highrises and concrete buildings in the city(ies), and the fact that the local civil defense has never had to handle any sort of disaster on this sort of scale, it's not going to be pretty if it does....

[CaptainChewbacca]

Capt. Chewbacca, do you think that there will be any chance in future that instead of 'merely' tremors Malaysia could outright suffer an earthquake of sufficient magnitude to cause damage to buildings? Given the amount of highrises and concrete buildings in the city(ies), and the fact that the local civil defense has never had to handle any sort of disaster on this sort of scale, it's not going to be pretty if it does....

A significant quake of that magnitude in malaysia is inevitable, I don't know how long.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Singaporean posters + Anithyng, any tremors near you? A bunch of posters on Sammyboy said they could feel the Sumatra one.

Yes, there were tremors felt, but I didn't feel any.

As for the big one, I'd be more worried about Lake Toba's ressurrection.