Did You Hear About the 7.0 Earthquake in Haiti?

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What a terrible disaster...it hit near the capital, a densely populated area. One of the first reports stated a hospital collapsed...other reports say many buildings have collapsed also.

Tomorrow, when the sun rises and pictures start coming in, I expect they will be horrific.
 
http://www.9and10news.com/category/story/?id=197961 about casualties yet. Some nations check their casualties: Netherlands: none reported, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/01/13/world/AP-AS-China-Haiti-Earthquake.html .
 
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Reports in Polish media tells about hundreds of missing - hotel LaMontana and ONZ building are listed as collapsed with unknown number of people potentially inside.
 
Mag 7 is significant and I doubt any of the buildings were constructed to standards for mag 7.

Details on this guy.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2010rja6.php

and there were numerous aftershooks over the following 48 hrs.
 
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Astronuc said:
Mag 7 is significant and I doubt any of the buildings were constructed to standards for mag 7.

Details on this guy.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2010rja6.php

and there were numerous aftershooks over the following 48 hrs.

Or any standard at all Astronuc, which is unfortunate :frown:
 
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The devastation is just terrible.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/cb_haiti_earthquake
 
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Thousands feared dead in Haiti quake; many trapped
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/cb_haiti_earthquake

President Rene Preval says he believes thousands of people are dead even as other officials give much higher estimates — though they were based on the extent of the destruction rather than firm counts of the dead.

His prime minister, Jean-Max Bellerive, tells CNN: "I believe we are well over 100,000," while leading senator Youri Latortue tells The Associated Press that 500,000 could be dead. Both admit they have no way of knowing.
!
 
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The quake was very close to Port-au-Prince.

http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/bulletin/neic_rja6.jpg

Here is the shake map.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/shakemap/global/shake/2010rja6/download/intensity.jpg

Instrument intensity shows it hit almost dead center on the city.

Wow!

Popular tropical architecture is hollow CMU, or concrete block. The reason is that it doesn't rot. Rarely is it reinforced with rebar and filled solid with grout. In Haiti they often use mud for mortar.

The devastation to the city is staggering. Over two million people live in the immediate area.
 
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Cyclovenom said:
Or any standard at all Astronuc, which is unfortunate :frown:
Yeah - I was thinking seismic standards are non-existent there.

Interestingly, I was once walking through a neighborhood of Salamanca, Spain, where there was a lot of new construction. I happened to pass through by a building where bricks were being mortared between reinforced concrete posts. I was wonder if that construction would withstand a strong earthquake. It's the kind of thing an engineer would think about in a situation like that. :biggrin:
 
Not even the presidential palace was earthquake proof:

http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/haiti-palace.jpg
 
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It was reported on local radio today that the USS Carl Vinson (a carrier) was en route from Norfolk to San Diego when it was diverted to Jacksonville to pick up a helicopter squadron. Googled and found that it had just left yesterday - lucky coincidence. My girlfriends cousin is a SAR swimmer based in Jacksonville and he was given 4 hours to be ready. They left this afternoon and will be on station tomorrow.
 
Damn, that sucks.

What is the frequency of earthquakes in that area of the world? I am told that quakes in areas with a low frequency of quakes tend to have greater surface displacements and are attenuated less with distance because the bedrock isn't very fragmented.
 
Who will bell the cat? I have sent donations for the "Haiti Earthquake" to the American Red Cross International Response Fund, the Salvation Army International Disaster Relief Fund, and soon, UNICEF. If we can help the survivors of 9/11, certainly we can assist a neighbor with a disaster perhaps 100-fold greater.
 
Google on Salvation Army Haiti Relief. The SA has a fantastic track record here - Red Cross does not. SA is active in Haiti, and deserves our assistance. I just made a donation - I hope other PF-ers will, too.
 
Update: it took almost 5 minutes to get a confirmation of my donation to the Salvation Army. That's probably a good sign if their servers are being slowed by the rate of donations. Please help if you can.

The United Bikers of Maine have teamed up with the Marines and the Salvation Army for decades here in Maine to coordinate the largest annual charity drive in the state. They are good people. My father always gives them money though he is not well-to-do. The reason? When he was in Europe in WWII, the Red Cross was corrupt and tried to make GIs pay for donated care packages. When he was returned to the US, he was not with his unit and ended up on a troop ship that docked in Charleston. He had been transferring all his money to his mother and had no cash. The Red Cross refused to help him get home, but the Salvation Army put him up and fed him so that his mother could wire money for bus-fare and food so he could get home.
 
Lois Hechinger England, of hardware store fame and leader with the Washington D.C. Red Cross, told my mother (a national Goodwill Industries volunteer of the year) that this rumor about the Red Cross is untrue: the way she put it, toward the end of WWII the Red Cross was charging nothing for coffee vs a nickel as the Army was, so to save the Army's face, they too started charging a nickel, and got the blame.

I am biased, as I have an investment in the Red Cross - over 50 pints worth. I do agree that the Salvation Army has proved considerably more efficient in recent years, though.
 
Loren Booda said:
Lois Hechinger England, of hardware store fame and leader with the Washington D.C. Red Cross, told my mother (a national Goodwill Industries volunteer of the year) that this rumor about the Red Cross is untrue: the way she put it, toward the end of WWII the Red Cross was charging nothing for coffee vs a nickel as the Army was, so to save the Army's face, they too started charging a nickel, and got the blame.

I am biased, as I have an investment in the Red Cross - over 50 pints worth. I do agree that the Salvation Army has proved considerably more efficient in recent years, though.
Near the end of WWII cigarettes and chocolate were worth their weight in gold on the black market. My father is not prone to lying and when he says that US care packages were being sold to GIs instead of being given to them, I have no reason to doubt him. He was in Airborne and ended up in a motor pool in Liege Belgium to ride out the war due to a broken ankle. His Army pay was being forwarded to his mother back here in Maine, and he had no money to pay for chocolate, cigarettes, and other stuff. He hates the Red Cross with a passion.
 
I've never been through an earthquake.

Can people tell the difference between a 7 and a 6 magnitude, and between quakes of each magnitude?
 
Newai said:
I've never been through an earthquake.

Can people tell the difference between a 7 and a 6 magnitude, and between quakes of each magnitude?
Doubtful, unless you have experienced either, though the magnitude scale is logarithmic, not linear. I've been through some around 4 mag that others had no idea were happening, so obviously scaling up to 6-7 mag has some pretty dramatic effects on structural damage.
 
My wife works for a large US athletic shoe manufacturer, and the management announced that donations to the US Red Cross for Haitian relief would be matched. She asked if our (rather sizable) donation to the Salvation Army's Haiti Relief Fund would be matched if she brought in a receipt from the SA. The answer was no. That sickens me. The Red Cross has so much staff, facilities, and overhead that they will bleed these donations, while the SA tries to operate on a shoestring, and emphasizes local interactivity wherever they operate. PLEASE give your donations to the SA instead of the Red Cross.
 
You don't have to worry about that with me. I made that decision a little bit after that whole 9/11 shadyness.
 
I've alreday donated for Haiti relief and I am happy about the big media coverage and the awareness. Also watched parts of the benefit show with Clooney and co. It's great to see that also celebrities try to help the victims of the earthquake.
 

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