SINGAPORE, Feb 7 (Reuters) - A 6.6 magnitude earthquake struck on Sunday east of Taiwan, about 73 miles south southwest of Ishigaki-jima in Japan's Ryukyu islands, the U.S. Geographic Survey said.
It struck at a relatively shallow depth of 6.6 miles. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said there was no danger of a tsunami.
Earthquakes occur frequently in the region, which lies on a seismically active stretch of the Pacific basin. (Reporting by Nick Macfie)
แสดงบทความที่มีป้ายกำกับ Southern Asia แสดงบทความทั้งหมด
แสดงบทความที่มีป้ายกำกับ Southern Asia แสดงบทความทั้งหมด
Strong quake strikes east of Taiwan
6.4-magnitude quake hits southern Taiwan
6.4-magnitude quake hits southern Taiwan
March 3, 2010 9:08 p.m. EST
(CNN) -- A 6.4-magnitude earthquake jolted southern Taiwan on Thursday morning, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. There were no immediate reports of injuries or deaths but some damage has occurred to buildings and major bridges, and power was cut off near the epicenter.
The quake struck at about 8:20 a.m. (7:20 p.m. Wednesday ET) in a mountainous region about 25 miles northwest of Taitung, on the southeast coast, and 40 miles east of Tainan and Kaohsiung on the southwest coast.
The region, which includes Maolin National Scenic Area, is recovering from a direct hit by Typhoon Morakot that killed hundreds in August. The typhoon dumped more than two feet of rain, causing serious mudslides in the south, including one that buried the village of Shiao Lin under 50 feet of mud.
Thursday's quake was followed by several aftershocks, the largest reaching 4.8. The initial 6.4 quake rumbled to the surface from 14 miles deep.
The Taiwan Ministry of Interior and the National Fire Agency said electricity was cut off near the epicenter but had no further information.
Residents in southern Taiwan reported cracks in some buildings and major bridges. Train service was also disrupted in some areas, Taiwanese media reported.
Albert Yu, communications manager of the humanitarian organization World Vision, told CNN he was about halfway through a 90-minute trip via high-speed train from Taipei to Tainan when the quake struck. Passengers did not feel the quake, he said, but operators stopped the train and announced what had happened. More than an hour later, the train had not resumed its journey.
"The operator is examining the train and the tracks," he said, adding that there was a concern about the stability of the area, particularly after the typhoon. "Inside the train, people are calm and are waiting it out -- opening laptops, starting to work and chatting with people around them."
Yu said World Vision "has already been on high alert responding to the quakes in Haiti and Chile, so we're closely monitoring reports in the earthquake in southern Taiwan."
Residents in the capital Taipei, 155 miles to the north, also felt the shaking.
Earthquakes are not uncommon in the 13,892-square-mile island -- about the size of the U.S. states of Maryland and Delaware combined -- which sits across the juncture of the Eurasian and Philippine tectonic plates.
A 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck the same general region in December. The island took a double hit on December 26, 2006, when earthquakes of 7.1 and 6.9 magnitude hit eight minutes apart.
The largest recorded quake to strike Taiwan was an 8.0-magnitude quake in 1920, but the worst earthquake disaster stemmed from a 7.1-magnitude quake in 1935 that killed more than 3,200 people -- followed by a 6.5-magnitude quake that killed more than 2,700 people three months later.
More recently, a 7.6-magnitude earthquake killed more than 2,400 people in 1999.
CNN's Christine Theodorou and Journalist Andrew Lee contributed to this report
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- 6.4 quake rocks southern Taiwan at about 0120 GMT
- Aftershocks follow; no immediate reports of deaths
- Quake hits northwest of Taitung, on the southeast coast
- Residents in southern Taiwan report blackouts; train services disrupted
This map shows where the 6.4 quake struck Taiwan on Thursday morning.
Tsunami Hits Thailand & South East Asia!
Do you hear the power of these beasts ?
this video makes me cry :'( So many people could of avoided death. There were also some people still relaxing and didnt know the waves....
Dedicated to all 2004 December 26th Boxing Day Tsunami Victims, families,those injured, and those otherwise affected.
The terrible devastation and the aftermath of this catastrophe caught on tape. The 2004 Boxing Day tsunami was triggered by an earthquake off the north-west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra. It killed 230,000 people in a dozen Indian Ocean countries, 170,000 of them in Indonesia's Aceh province alone.
Sri Lanka and Thailand were severely impacted by the tsunami on December 26, 2004. Tsunami Thailand 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake was an undersea earthquake that occurred at 00:58:53 UTC (07:58:53 local time) December 26, 2004, with an epicentre off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia.
Surprisingly, some islands right in the middle of the tsunami were not badly affected. It turns out their atolls, or coral reefs, absorbed much of the wave. The coral ridges protected them. In many regions of the Asian waters, there is a practice some fishermen use, of dynamiting the natural coral reefs to bring up fish. These barriers to the tsunami were no longer in place to deflect the water.
The disaster promoted a global outpouring of sympathy, with governments, individuals and corporations pledging more than $13 billion in aid. According to UN database, nearly two years after donors pledged billions to help the victims only half the money had been spent. Of the half a million people left homeless by the disaster, only a third have been permanently rehoused.
The public response to the tsunami was very untypical. A combination of events - the dramatic nature of the huge wave, its occurrence at Christmas, the size of the disaster, the fact that so many Westerners died, the availability of spectacular video footage and the extensive TV coverage that secured - meant that the global public gave far more than ever before. The money went to aid agencies that were too small to mastermind such a mammoth task. Oxfam has spent more than $280 million on disaster recovery work and is now more than three-quarters of the way through its response plan. Aid workers have helped more than 2.3 million people across seven countries to get back into their homes.Despite the outpouring of generosity from aid agencies and individuals, recipient countries say pledges by some governments have still not been honoured.
The earthquake triggered a series of devastating tsunamis along the coasts of most landmasses bordering the Indian Ocean, killing more than 230,000 people in eleven countries, and inundating coastal communities with waves up to 30 meters With a magnitude of between 9.1 and 9.3, it is the second largest earthquake ever recorded on a seismograph. This earthquake had the longest duration of faulting ever observed, between 8.3 and 10 minutes. It caused the entire planet to vibrate as much as 1 cm (0.5 inches) and triggered other earthquakes as far away as Alaska.
Everybody Knows - Aztec Two-Step
The disaster is known by the scientific community as the Great Sumatra-Andaman earthquake,and is also known as the Asian Tsunami and the Boxing Day Tsunami. Thailand: 5,393 confirmed dead, 3,071 missing. Many of the missing are presumed dead. Maldives: 82 dead, 26 missing.
Sri Lanka, which was second hardest hit by the catastrophe, stood at 30,957, according to the Centre for National Operations. The number of people listed as missing was 5637. In India, the official death toll was 10,749 with 5640 still reported missing and feared dead.
The latest disaster to hit Asia, Cyclone Nargis struck May 2008, bringing winds of up 120mph and flooding to the badly affected Irrawaddy Delta region, Burma Myanmar. The cyclone had left twice as many people vulnerable as the 2004 Asian tsunami.
What 's the earth moving on ?
Do you know about tectonic plates ?
A tectonic plate (also called lithospheric plate) is a massive, irregularly shaped slab of solid rock, generally composed of both continental and oceanic lithosphere.
Plate size can vary greatly, from a few hundred to thousands of kilometers across; the Pacific and Antarctic Plates are among the largest. Plate thickness also varies greatly, ranging from less than 15 km to about 200 km !!
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