5.8 Magnitude Quake Sends Jitters Along U.S. East Coast
I'm in Richmond, VA. It was pretty powerful! It was unmistakable what it was just
2-3 seconds into it, but we dont get them here so I didnt think it would be that
bad.
Suddenly, it did get bad, the ceiling tiles started vibrating in their grid
and there was a definite up and down motion and at least one long but not very
violent sideways motion. I bolted for outside, I wasnt the only one either. Its
an old brick building with who knows what over the top of those ceiling tiles.
Outside the windows in the other buildings were swaying in and out, a roll down
metal door across the way was rattling. You could feel it quietly thumping up
through your feet for a good 30 seconds or so…its hard to say how long, between
30-60 seconds is my guess. No damage that I could tell, but Im surprised there
isnt. It ramped up in intensity really quickly and then tapered off… Scary
stuff.
Read the article REUTERS/Rare strong quake rattles East Coast
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5.8 is not a tiny quake. It can do significant property, depending on factors
like soil consistency and building structure. It is not a "Great" quake, but
it's pretty big if you're in the right place.
The numbers are
exponential; 6.0 is ten times as strong as 5.0. When you think about that, you
begin to see that a 5.8 is twice as strong as a 5.7, so a 5.9 is twice as strong
as a 5.8 and like five times as strong as a 5.5.
I've been bounced around
and seen signicant building damage near the epicenter of a 5.2. What's that, one
eighth as strong as a 5.9?
Don't be fooled by the numbers! Just because
they are less than a million doesn't mean they aren't strong
Read the article NPR/5.8
Magnitude Earthquake Rattles East Coast
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I’m a structural engineer from SF but currently in Christchurch, which has taught me not to discount earthquakes of magnitudes under M7.0. Honestly, a M5.8 in downtown San Francisco or San Jose would probably kill people; we still have a lot of old buildings with precarious parapets or garage openings on the ground floors (soft storey buildings). Here in ChCh we’re learning that a lot of typical retrofit schemes for old brick buildings don’t work well.
The one thing you can say about an M5.8 is that accelerations drop off very quickly as you get farther away from the epicentre. (Sure, you could feel it from New York, but even within Virginia you had to be really close to feel more than 0.1g peak ground acceleration, according to USGS’s ShakeMap.) I’d only expect life-threatening damage within a 10 or 20 mile radius. That’s why Christchurch doesn’t have a functioning downtown right now. In contrast, I was in Chile after their M8.8 last year and I saw similar damage in cities 600km apart!
I’m not an expert on the geotechnical stuff so I really appreciate this article.
Read the article ARS TECHNICA/Why was the East Coast earthquake felt so far from the epicenter?
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It was interesting. Living in the Northern Virginia area all my life this was a doozy. In my area we have "small" shakes from blasting at a quarry all the time. I happened to be standing in a U-Haul building at the time (Alexandria) and we all looked at each other at first, shaking for a second. One guy yelled earthquake and the rest of us thought a boiler had exploded or something along those lines. By the time we had realized it was an earthquake we moved outside but at that point the cars and glass were moving but you could not feel it on the ground itself. I would say it was 15 seconds max. I hear other areas had up to 45 seconds of rattling, give or take.It was an experience, I will give it that much. Having never before experienced an earthquake it was something.
Read the article ARS TECHNICA/Why was the East Coast earthquake felt so far from the epicenter?
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Would a building's innate earthquake resistance make a difference in how it affects a person's ability to feel tremors? Obviously, buildings on the west coast are designed to resist tremors, but I would imagine such considerations aren't treated with the same seriousness in the construction process over on this coast, where 5.8 magnitude earthquakes are national news.
Good question. The answer is basically “no”, but it’s more complicated than that. You can design good buildings that are either stiff or flexible – there are trade-offs but both can work.
Concrete or masonry shear walls, or steel braced frames, are stiff. That means they have low natural periods, often under 0.5s (=high resonant frequency), and earthquakes tend to have a lot more high frequency content in that same range. They end up taking a lot more force, so they have to be pretty robust. The whole building tends to move as a big block, so each floor experiences similar accelerations to the ground (until you get above 10 storeys or so). Those higher accelerations can damage computers, servers, artwork, TVs, etc. It’s a bad idea for museums and data centres.
Steel or concrete moment frames, or wood buildings (despite being shear-walled), are relatively flexible. They can be weaker because they don’t attract as much force (but being weak is not a result of being flexible – you have to separate the concepts of strength and stiffness). They’ll displace a lot more, and that’s what people usually notice. Displacement ruins partition walls, windows, stairs, elevators, etc. so flexible buildings are often more expensive to fix after an earthquake that doesn’t trash the structure itself. If you’re in a low- or mid-rise building you’d feel it more in one of these. But if you’re in a skyscraper, the bottom half of the building might move under the earthquake while the top basically stays still because it can’t keep up (i.e. the quake’s frequency content is way off from the building’s resonant frequency).
Read the article ARS TECHNICA/Why was the East Coast earthquake felt so far from the epicenter?
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Why all the fuss . We get quakes every day in California. Don't you know the planet is still cooling down and crust contracting. Its a natural event until the earth finally cools to where there will be no movement. So calm down, there is nothing you can do about it . Except listen or look at the fear and paranoid media waffling on, like a bunch of talking heads....Happy Labor Day
Read the article LOS ANGELES TIMES/What?! An earthquake? East Coast reacts with shock
Giant Hogweed: Beware the Plant from Hell!
People are always surprised when they hear there are a hundred things in their backyard that can injure, maim, and/or kill them. Education is the best preventative measure. Know where you are and what you need to look out for.
When I was younger, an ill-informed group of Shriners had a pinic area near a park playground. They had an open flame for roasting hotdogs and such. The wood they used was oak that had Poison Ivy growing over it. Several of them got sick, and several members of my church woke up covered in poison ivy rash. My eye was swollen shut for a day.
Be smart out there, safety will naturally follow.
Read the article MSNBC/Blistering, blinding weed creeps toward a city near you
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My grandmother deliberately kept a crop growing alongside her home in Seattle back in the 30s and 40s. We never knew enough to be worried about it, but we didn't cut bouquets and bring it into the house. It was exciting each year to see how high it would grow alongside the 3 story house.
Read the article MSNBC/Blistering, blinding weed creeps toward a city near you
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They make herbicides for stuff like that, you know. Maybe if someone paid attention and stopped just letting noxious weeds like that grow everywhere just because they're pretty, stuff like this wouldn't even make the news. Of course, the government has paid $billions trying to eradicate marijuana, but hasn't paid any attention -- or money -- to eradicate this weed, even though it's actually dangerous to humans.
Read the article MSNBC/Blistering, blinding weed creeps toward a city near you
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Hmm.. I've got deadly nightshade, wormswood (boy that's invasive) and a kind of
spectacularly stinky corpse plant blooming right now. I'm wondering on the
salmonberries, and the persimmon and fig trees strangely didn't bloom this year.
The ginkoe baloba tree, as always, is perfect. (and is a pollution eater) But
shucks I sure do hope no giant pig weed goes wild-hog crazy round my home on
wheels!
Read the article SEATTLE POST INTELLIGENCER/Beware giant hogweed and its burning, blinding sap
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The attack of the invasive species in America:
*the hogweed plant, with its potential to inflict 3rd-degree burns
*the Asian big-head and silver carps, threatening to destroy the ecological systems of the Missouri, Illinois and Mississippi Rivers, and the Great Lakes
*the reticulated python, threatening to take over South Florida and the Everglades
*fire ants, pervading the South and West
*Kudzu, strangling out native plant species across the South
*killer bees, expanding their territory across the West and South.
Human beings are really smart creatures, aren't they? Can you say "self-destructive?"
Read the article HUFFINGTON POST/Giant Hogweed Spreading Across New York State, DEC Warns Of Burns and Blindness
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Giant Hogweed is already a long known issue in the Netherlands. Therefore we have already developed ways to counteract them.
The greenest way is to let sheep graze on the land wher the Hogweed grows. They eat the whole plant without any harm to them. People happy and sheep very happy.
Read the article HUFFINGTON POST/Giant Hogweed Spreading Across New York State, DEC Warns Of Burns and Blindness
Another Look at Oil from Coal
I would argue that YES, coal-to-liquids processes such as Fischer-Tropsch are indeed very dirty, wasteful, overly expensive and potentially damaging to the environment in terms of carbon footprint...
UNTIL one factors in the waste, expense, and carbon footprint of two GIGANTIC wars.
Then suddenly Fischer-Tropsch starts to look quite benign.
Given that we basically have two choices, continued wars and being held hostage by increasingly fanatical nations and a somewhat dirty domestic process, I think I would choose the latter, even as I continue to work for even cleaner alternatives.
Read the article HUFFINGTON POST/Filling your tank with....coal
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Good luck dealing with those coal boys. I've done it and dealt with them to this day. There's some sort of invisible hand that can "move mountains" at work here.
One thing everyone needs to understand - coal is going to be around for a while, despite what a wretched fuel industry it is.
Another thing the coal folks need to know; there's an invisible border that you cross when you leave the coal fields. Past that border, people hate coal and they would prefer some other kind of fuel or renewable alternative energy.
While coal is still a factor, I recommend people clean coal up and seek out sustainable lifestyles. We are past "PEAK OIL AND COAL". The transition is just getting started. You need to be on the right side of history. For now, we need to work together, and as coal is phased out, there need to be a seamless transition into the new power and energy providers.
Read the article HUFFINGTON POST/Filling your tank with....coal
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My community is facing the prospect of 20 new 1.5 mile long uncovered coal trains per day through the heart of our city to a coal dump smack dab beside sensitive marine eco systems on the Puget Sound. All to supply China with ores from Montana (Peabody coal owned by Australians) on trains (Burlington Northern owned by Warren Buffet) right along our city's waterfront and highest priced development areas.
This would be the largest Coal Port and dump in America (to be built and operated by SSA Marine) for the sake of a few industrial jobs. These are not the 'green jobs' our Govenor Gregoire promised. The existing rail corridor, hailed 100 years ago, hosts a few Amtrak and materials trains to Canada and back daily.
Our pristine natural environment, fresh air, and much of our local tourism and business vitality is at stake. Other cities in Washington and Oregon have fought this off. How else will Montanna get their coal to China? Dust from coal is toxic to wildlife, soils and air. The associated CO2 and pollution in China will drift on prevailing winds back to our shores via acid rain. There are no easy answers. As long as we use coal, we will all be affected from it's extraction and use
Read the article HUFFINGTON POST/Filling your tank with....coal
READ MORE COMMENTS: MAY- JUNE 2011
