Tag Archives: Earthquakes

Chile, South America

El Diario: 8 Enero 2015

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We are getting close to wrapping up our year in Chile and coming home.  It’s been a great experience that we would both do again.  We’ve learned a lot about ourselves during this last year.  We’ve met some really great people and have been able to do and see some truly amazing places and things.

We’ve made friends who we will make an effort to stay in contact with and hopefully visit or have them visit us in the future.  Yesterday we were able to see some of the cadets that we taught English.  Yup, we’ll miss having that job.  Teaching English is a great way to meet people and learn what a country is really like.

Travel comes to mind first as we prepare to travel to the Lakes District of Chile tomorrow.  We’ve been to Easter Island on Easter, traveled throughout Peru, and just finished a spectacular trip in Patagonia last month.  Wooly is still working at processing photos because he had to switch to shooting in the RAW to save disk space.  Can’t wait to get home to purchase another photo drive and get the current one fixed.

The things we’ve encountered have been fun, at times, awe inspiring, and thought provoking.  One can’t look at a Moai without thinking about of the people who created them.  If you’ve never seen a large glacier up close you need to see one with the realization that they may be gone in the future if nothing is done about global warming.  Penguins are fun to watch in their natural habitat.

We’ve just had 3 tremors (earthquakes below 7.0) in the last two days.  I doubt we’ll miss them after having 29 since we’ve arrived.  Check out the earthquakes tab if you’re a science geek.

We’re looking forward to coming home and re-establishing our friendships but are sad to leave the friends we gained in the last year.

 

Chile, South America

El Diario – 18 Octubre 2014

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This week when we got to work we were asked if we felt the tremor (check out the Earthquakes tab) earlier in the morning (we didn’t).    That got me to wondering what Chileans believe is the difference between an earthquake and a tremor.  They called this year’s 8.2 in Iquique and the 7.1 off the coast of Easter Island an earthquake and Tuesday’s 5.2 a tremor.

To further complicate matters – on the same day last August we had a 6.5 tremor while Napa had a 6.0 earthquake.  Confused yet?  Well this got Wooly thinking (oh, oh) about what the difference is between a tremor and an earthquake.  After checking numerous sites on the web that all disagreed about the intensity required to promote a tremor to earthquake status Wooly came up with one conclusion.

Armed with that conclusion Wooly decided to test it at work the next morning.  When he asked his gringo friends they pretty much concluded anything above 6.0 would qualify as a full-fledged earthquake.  A couple of them said before they came to Chile that number would have been around 5.0 or so.  Yet when the Chileans were asked they all pretty much agreed it takes a 7.0 or greater to be called a bona-fide earthquake.

So there you have it.  If you live in an area where ground movement is rare or occasional, anything you feel is an earthquake.  Yet someone living in an area with frequent ground movement it takes a higher number.  Or in the case of Chile with lots of large earth movements (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Chile) it seems a 7.0 or greater is required before the local folks grant a tremor earthquake status.  For those who remember, just think of the damage the 1989 6.9 Loma Prieta (the World Series earthquake) caused and how many lives were lost or the 1994 6.7 Northridge quake in the L.A. area.   I had to chuckle last March when a friend commented on the 5.1 earthquake they had in L.A. had him shook up.  Sorry, had to do that.

And what about the Valparaiso and Viña del Mar areas where we live?  Here is a list of Valparaiso earthquakes:

  • 1730 – 8.7
  • 1737 – 7.7
  • 1822 – 8.5
  • 1829 – 7.0
  • 1831 – 7.8
  • 1833 – 7.7
  • 1900’s – Nothing
  • 2000’s – Nothing

A 200 year gap without any significant earthquakes makes us overdue for a very large one.  It could possibly even be in the 9.x range.  Here’s hoping it doesn’t happen while we’re here, or if it does nothing falls on us or collapses underneath us.