Haiti earthquake

[MileHigh]

Just got an alert there was a 7.0 centered 10 miles from Port-au-Prince, but it's been upgraded to a 7.3

http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE60B5JQ20100112

 

[deskslave]

This sort of thing never ends well.

There was a 6.5 off the Northern California coast over the weekend.

 

[OnTheRiver]

7.3 near a country well-stocked with shanty towns. Won't even come close to ending well, deskslave.

 

[MileHigh]

AP reports a hospital collapsed. Tsunami warning issued.

5.9 and 5.5 aftershocks already.

 

[Mystery Meat II]

Kind of a surreal appeal from the Haitian ambassador to the U.S. on Wolf Blitzer's show: Help us because we helped you guys in the War of 1776. But it sounds pretty awful.

 

[mb]

I'm setting the over/under at 4 on freestanding structures remaining.

 

[pressboxer]

I'm setting the over/under at 4 on freestanding structures remaining.

And those get wiped out in the next hurricane.

 

[Shaggy]

Maybe someone with more long-term earthquake knowledge can answer this: Is it just me or has there been an unusual number of large earthquakes around the world in the last six months?

And none of them have hit Southern California or the Bay Area.

 

[MileHigh]

4.3 hit SoCal last night. There's no real rhyme or reason for how/when these things hit or the cluster of them. Not that we know of anyway.

 

[PCLoadLetter]

Haiti's national palace has reportedly been destroyed. This is going to be very bad.

 

[Football_Bat]

7.3 near a country well-stocked with shanty towns. Won't even come close to ending well, deskslave.

Actually, the shantytowns will probably come out of this in the best shape, relatively speaking. They have nothing to begin with and can slap-dash their abodes back together in a few hours, although the disruption in water supply, food, etc. in the aftermath is another story.

It's the people in the built-substandard hospitals, office buildings, etc. who will suffer the greatest loss of life from the jolt itself. That toll will be fearsome.

 

[Mystery Meat II]

And God help 'em if it starts raining. They have bad landslide problems even in the best of times.

 

[deskslave]

Haiti has to be the most luckless place on the planet.

 

[2muchcoffeeman]

Pulling in pics from Twitter as I find them . . .

http://twitpic.com/xukcr

http://twitpic.com/xuwst

http://twitpic.com/xuwfz

http://twitpic.com/xuri1 ... this used to be a house.

This is going to be another huge event for Twitter, I think. Found all those pics via Twitter and Twitpic.

 

[2muchcoffeeman]

Another aftershock at 8-ish p.m., this one a 4.6.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2010rkag.php

There were a bunch of precursor quakes to the east of Hispaniola in the ocean surrounding Puerto Rico over the past few days, too.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Maps/10/290_20.php

 

[deskslave]

Interesting point being made on the news I'm watching: Because Haiti is so desperately poor, there are already numerous aid agencies on the ground there. Assuming they've made it through relatively unscathed, they'll be in a position to start helping almost immediately.

Guantanamo is 60 miles away from Haiti, as well. If the U.S. has anything there it can send, it can do so with some speed.

 

[mb]

AP just moved all those twitter pics. Interesting that they hit twitter first.

 

[2muchcoffeeman]

Interesting point being made on the news I'm watching: Because Haiti is so desperately poor, there are already numerous aid agencies on the ground there. Assuming they've made it through relatively unscathed, they'll be in a position to start helping almost immediately.

Guantanamo is 60 miles away from Haiti, as well. If the U.S. has anything there it can send, it can do so with some speed.

Close enough that Gitmo was put under a tsunami warning that only expired a few minutes ago.

 

[2muchcoffeeman]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/inqro/4269736421/

 

[Football_Bat]

The fault that let go was a slip fault and not a thrust fault, therefore no massive displacement of water.

Thank Tebow for that. A 20-foot wall of water sweeping over South Florida would not be good. (I know I'm exaggerating, but this should be a reminder that the Caribbean is very seismically active.)