News from Chile, as it did and still does from Haiti, focusses on rescue and recovery following its horrendous earthquake. Several outlets have included explanations of the underlying geophysics behind this monster quake, at 8.8 magnitude among the largest in the instrumental record, and on the tsunami that rose along Chile’s coast and for awhile had even distant regions on alert.
For sheer historic sensibility – on top of a sensible account of the quake – a gold star to AAAS ScienceNOW‘s Richard A. Kerr for Did Darwin Help Predict Chilean Quake? ; It’s not just that he led with Charles Darwin’s keen-eyed observations on the region’s seismic instability, but the account provides another example beyond the 1960 even-bigger quake to tell readers that Chile may be the nation most often hit by quakes at the upper limit of violence possible for such things. It’s a brief story, and to the point. Kerr includes a list of other regions where dense populations appear to sit in the gaps between historic, large quakes – meaning that they are more or less due.
Also notable, at the Honolulu Star Bulletin, is Jim Borg‘s explanation for why, unlike 1960, Hilo Harbor on the Big Island got through with only minor sloshing. It is not so much that the tsunami was smaller as it crossed the wide sea, although this is a factor. The key, it says here, was its lack of resonance with the harbor basin and its nearby marine topography, something that the 1960 wave train did have. This is not necessarily easy to make into a pellucid news story, but Borg make it look easy.
Other science stories on Chilean disaster:
- Times (UK) Eureka Zone – Simon Haslett : Unravelling the Chilean Tsunami ; A professor blogs for the Times. Says indeed the tsunami, despite the subduction aspect of the quake and its vertical motions, was relatively small with significant damage limited to the quake zone itself
- AP: Alicia Chang: Chile quake in ‘elite class’ like 2004 Asian quake ;
- AP: Frank Bajak: Chile was ready for quake, Haiti wasn’t ; Well-sourced, well-organized summary. Among powerful tidbits: Chile is number one in world-class seismologists and earthquake engineers per capita.
- AP – Gillian Flaccus: Some Scientists Defend Tsunami Warnings ; This hed looks like a clunker and the story itself is a bit overly sour. It’s unclear whether the AP put this hed on, or ABC News where it appears here. If some scientists have criticized the warnings, or if significant public or official objection to it has arisen, that’s the better angle. If not, then the “some” is an odd qualifier. It implies there is controversy, and further that most scientists might also object to the warnings. The story is filed from Honolulu, where beaches were ordered empty for hours. There must be some grumbling there about the warning. The story has a tone of reproach for the alarm yet quotes nobody to say officials made the wrong call, but one official Japan apologized for the disruption the warning caused.
- AFP: Praise for nations’ tsunami emergency response ; This one gets one response to those who ignored the warnings and stayed on beaches. It’s stupid.
- MinnPost – Sharon Schmickle: Chile’s ‘megathrust’: a quite different geological actions from Haiti’s quake – the local outlet calls a local prof for the low down. He’s a font of detail.
- BBC: Concepcion’s troubled history ;
- Washington Post – Jonathon Franklin, R. Jeffrey Smith: Chile reels in aftermath ; Notable for detailed exploration, given the little time since the quake, of the building code enforcement and advance planning that made damage and casualty tolls smaller than one usually expects from an earthquake of this size.
- Reuters – Linda Sieg: Japan agency ‘sorry’ after tsunami less than feared ; Not sorry for the warning – mostly sorry it took them so long to call it off.
- USA Today – Donna Leinwand: Tsunami alerts help save lives ;
- Nat’l Geographic News – Richard A. Lovett: Chile-Earthquake Tsunami Smaller Than Expected – But Why? ; Nice piece that says it’s still was a big tsunami. But it went, one might add, into a big ocean with few islands for thousands of miles. Even Easter Island didn’t suffer much damage.
- NY Times – Henry Fountain: Underwater Plate Cuts 400-mile Gash ;
- NY Times Dot Earth – Andrew C. Revkin: Chilean Quake a Warning to U.S. Northwest ; Want to know where in the US a tectonic mousetrap looks cocked and ready, just like Chile’s? Andy was primed for this post – here’s one he filed (with terrific maps) just before Chile’s latest: Disaster Awaits Cities in Earthquake Zones;
And finally, a puzzler:
- LiveScience – Big quake question: Are they getting worse? / Some shockers to be expected, but planet seems to be more active ; The story is fine, it’s the hed that is odd. This is how it ran at MSNBC, and LiveScience runs it with no byline, so the exact provenance is unclear. The body of the story carries no strong evidence, and just one expert’s gut feeling, that the planet may have been somewhat more active lately, but nothing outside the envelope of standard deviation.
– Charlie Petit
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