Earthquakes, Smaller quakes precurser to bigger quake?
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Last night I was in Culver City, CA in an office building when I heard the building begin to creak and then felt the all familiar ground movement of an earthquake. It started off weak and rolling, which I knew from experience that it was probably far off. I wondered how far away it was. Well the first thing I did was goto the USGS website to see where it was. By using the latitude and longitude coordinates from the USGS Recent CA and NV quakes page and pasting that into the search box at Google Maps I got a pin point on where the earthquake was. Then by using get directions and entering in where I was located, I found out that it was approximately 211 drive miles away from me. (Note that it is probably less distance as the crow flies.)
I was also amazed at how many aftershocks happened with in about an hour of the quake (Originally registered as a 5.9 and later downgraded to a 5.7.) I was amazed at how many 3.0 and greater quakes there were. When I left about an hour later there were over 30 aftershocks.
This got me thinking this morning on how many quakes were in the general area before the 5.7 hit. I found that just by using the data listed on the USGS recent CA and NV page I was able to sort and remove distant quakes and get a list of quakes in the area. I was shocked at what I found. But since I am not an expert in geology and other ground movement sciences I didn’t trust my filter by longitude and latitude, so I filtered the data further to just anything that containec “Ocotillo, CA”.
I found that there were 3 quakes 3.0 or greater on the Richter scale that happened before the 5.7 of last night. First one I found happened on Jun 9th at 4:02 a.m. PDT (local time.) That one isn’t sigificant because it happened 5 1/2 days prior to the 5.7. However I did notice the other 2 were both on Jun 13th about the same time. 1:42:42 p.m. PDT and 1:42:59 PDT registering 3 and 3.5 respectively.
This got me to thinking, do all earthquakes that happen give warnings like this? Could we use this to develop an early warning system, even if it were not accurate it could help save lifes I would think. We would have to avoid the “Boy who cried wolf syndrome”.
As far as the data is concerned and how we can predict quakes, I will leave that to the experts like Lucy Jones.
We are not prepared here in LA on a official level or a personal one. See this quick video blurb on a recent quake and what Lucy Jones has to say about preparedness.
So the questions can we predict an earthquake like this one in advance? Well this gave 5 days, at most but more likely 1 day. How prepared can you get on 1 day? Bottom line is you can’t so start preparing now.
Here are some sites you can visit to start getting ready, you obviously will not be completely prepared for an earthquake when it happens, nor can you either get prepared in a week (unless you have a limitless amount of cash to buy stuff.) So just do some things each paycheck.
We have 1 gallon of water per person per day for a total of 7 days. We have a water dispenser in our home and have one of the 5 gallon water bottle delivery services come by every 2 weeks to trade out or empties for full ones. We just rotate out the oldest bottles when we use them putting the newest in the back. This was an easy way to at least get the basic of basics. Most people can live a week with out food. But you don’t want to be without water for very long so that was our first step.
Another thing you can do is to purchase extra can goods when you goto the store. Buy stuff you would normally eat. Plan on rotating the stock of stuff you buy at least ever six months that way your emergency supply is current.
Here are some links to sites that can help you get started in preparing for an earthquake.
Do some research but don’t get stuck in research because you can research the best way to prepare for ever and never get any closer being prepared.
Watch this video on what would happen if a 7.8 quake were to hit on the San Andreas Fault out in the South Eastern Desert.
Get Prepared, Stay Prepared.
Until the next time,
Thirteen