Tag Archives: earthquake

360 degree videos of Haiti Earthquake

Posted on January 23, 2010 | Leave a comment

Here are a series of three videos taken in Haiti last week by CNN. They’re not of the earthquake itself but of the area afterwards.

What is so interesting is that it’s video and you can drag the mouse to look in all directions, but the video (and audio) keeps playing as you drag the video around. At 900×500 it’s pretty large video too, I can’t promise how it’ll play on your older computer. CNN put this together so maybe they’ll add more later.

Video 1 in a three minute car ride through Haiti.
Video 2 on a three minute walk in Haiti.
Video 3 short car ride through Haiti.

It’s similar to the YellowBird demo I mentioned a few months back

Two Earthquakes in Costa Rica 5.7 + 5.9

Posted on March 11, 2009 | Leave a comment

Heard there was another earthquake felt in San Jose, Costa Rica. Actually, I saw a tweet from The Tico Times when they felt it. USGS reports that it was a 5.7 about 175 km (110 miles) SSE of San Jose. I was kind of worried after the last big one.

A 5.7 should be a bit less than the last one and it was centered in the water, but it was in the bay of the Osa Peninsula by Golfito. I’m hoping there won’t be as much devastation as the last one.

UPDATE: And this is followed four hours later by another quake of magnitude 5.9 just a few miles away. I’m not sure what makes this a new earthquake and not an aftershock, but @TheTicoTimes stated it that way.

LATER UPDATE: Looks like no injuries and very limited damages. And depending on where you look the magnitudes for the bother of the above range from 5.5 to 6.3. Here is an image from the Tico Times. They’ve got an article up, but I’m not sure how long until they rotate out the article.

The Earthquake in Costa Rica

Posted on January 16, 2009 | 1 comment

It’s been a week since the 6.2 earthquake in Costa Rica (Jan. 8, 2009) and while I’ve been updating my original post with info I thought I’d post another entry.

The death toll is at 23 people with 11 missing. Over 2000 people living in shelters and abut $100 million in estimated damages. This really sums up the whole tragic disaster.

There is a nice graphic of the area up at The Tico Times to give you some idea of location and details.

Speaking of The Tico Times, the latest issue came out today (it’s a weekly paper) and has a lot of information in it (they do sell a pdf of the paper on-line), they generally don’t publish very many full stories on-line other than by subscription but they’ve had a lot up there this week. The first 11 pages of the January 16, 2009 issue of the Tico Times is full of info on this earthquake, including a history of earthquakes in Costa Rica, info/diagrams of seismic plates in Central America a safety quiz and more. I’m not trying to sell you the TIco Times but it’s really got a lot on the earthquake this week and I do like The Tico Times.

I didn’t realize that this was the biggest quake in 18 years. Lately, I’ve heard mention of earthquakes, but I didn’t think I’ve heard much about them before a year or so ago. But I’ve spent more time there lately (4 trips in 12 months) and I’ve been getting The Tico Times delivered to Michigan so I’m catching more news that I would have missed before. I’m assuming it was my lack of information that led me to that misconception and not that they’ve had more in the past year.

There are volcanos in the area of the quake, the closest is the Poás Volcano which is about 10km from the center of the earthquake (about 90 km is the Arenal Volcano, the worlds most active volcano. Volcanos tend to follow fault lines and Costa Rica is right off of the one that becomes the San Andreas fault (if you follow it up a map you’ll see it). . Volcanos and earthquakes in the same place make me extra nervous but that doesn’t seem to have caused any issues. On a side note, the Poas Volcano National Park is closed through Monday due to some unrelated volcanic activity; it seems coincidental but maybe it closes all the time, but I haven’t noticed it in the paper before…

If you haven’t read it since I first put it up, I have added more links and news to my post from last week.

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Tagged Costa Rica, disaster, earthquake, Michigan, Poas Volcano, R.I.P., terremoto, The Tico Times, Tico Times

6.1 Earthquake in Costa Rica (updates)

Posted on January 9, 2009 | 2 comments

Costa Rica had a huge earthquake yesterday (Thursday, January 8th, 2009), 6.2 on the richter scale (I’ve seen reports that say 6.1). Just north of the San Jose area. This is the biggest one that I’ve heard of in Central Valley. The Tico Times has a lot of the earthquake coverage (you do have to do some clicking and scrolling, they’re mostly a subscription service).

They’re reporting about 23 dead with 11 still missing (at least that’s how I’m piecing everything together, I’ve seen numbers all over the place; as high as 30 dead). Lots of damage, mud slides and people trapped in various areas. 1,000+ people relocated and another 1,000+ stranded. If you check out the news stories from around the world there are definitely conflicting reports (especially on the death toll). Lots more earthquake details here and if you’ve got Google Earth installed there are some additional visual details if you click on the spot of the earthquake.

I can’t imagine the chaos and devastation that something like this causes. My thoughts an prayers go out to everyone affected by this…

I’ve been having a hard time getting my head around some of the damage, I found some photos at Inside Costa Rica and a video clip (in Spanish).

You can see many of the areas that felt it on this map, people can actually report it and that’s what feeds the map (don’t know how long they keep these on-line).

How many people are affected by this that I’ve met on my various trips down there? Places that I’ve visited or stayed at the I don’t recognize the names. I wonder how much it freaks out the tourists, imagine if they didn’t speak the language. I don’t speak Spanish well enough, in a crisis, without my translation book, I don’t know what I’d do…

There was a slightly bigger one (6.5 richter scale) in November when I was there, but I didn’t feel it and I don’t remember this much death and damage, but it was way at the south end of the country (I think it might have been in Panama) and if it was a few of my more isolated days I wouldn’t have gotten much news. My biggest earthquake ever was also in Costa Rica (4.3 richter scale) but most people didn’t even notice it (it was just after midnight).

A slightly erratic post but these thoughts have been in my head and wanted to share them…

I’ll add more links below:
Pictures from the Tico Times newspaper (more landscapes and buildings are towards the end).
Photos from al Dia from La Cinchona de Sarapiquí, Heredia
La Paz waterfalls had to close down. I believe some people took shelter there when the roads got cut off (I might be mixing the location up).

FYI, I’ve been updating the details in this posting daily, it was originally from January 9, 2009 but some of the details might be from up to a week later.

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Tagged Costa Rica, earthquake, news, terremoto, The Tico Times, Tico Times, Waterfall, Waterfalls

The Attempt at Flight (or how the flood stopped me from catching my plane)

Posted on September 5, 2008 | 2 comments

So I left Tamarindo with more than enough time to spare to get to the airport. That’s it. The rest of the story pretty much writes itself doesn’t it? It’s clear I don’t make my plane but why? There’s the obvious like car problems and the not so obvious like I was abducted by aliens; I wasn’t abducted but it was certainly closer to that end of the continuum.

When I left Tamarindo it was raining but everything was fine. About ten minutes into the ride I get a few cars flashing their lights at me, usually a sign of a speed trap so I slowed down. A few turns later I see there was some kind of avalanche but I’m not sure if it’s from the rain or the earthquake from last night. There are some huge items about a meter in diameter but I’m not sure if it’s rock or mud either way I drove around it. I did pass a few more mini-avalances but some I probably could have just driven through and been okay.

But as I drive I notice the water is getting deeper on the sides of the road; I hadn’t noticed much at the start but I was much closer to the ocean so it has lots of options for drainage. Then I notice the fields are flooded on both sides of the road and while I’m not certain how tall the crops are I know the backs of those tires are under at least a dozen inches of water. Then it starts covering the road! What’s really nice is the few times that I can’t see what’s under the water (hopefully road) there are other cars so i just follow them along. The worst was probably about three-hundred feet(?) long. Many shorter ones but there were a few deep dips too; these weren’t wide but I didn’t know about flash flooding coming down these roads. The flooding is worse for the homes much of them are in water that is knee deep at parts but some are waist deep (some of these homes are on cement platforms but I don’t think many were more than 18 inches and most were less than a foot). No one seems panicky and some people were relaxing on a bench on a porch, it was really sad to see.

Then I see a quantity of people walking towards me on both sides of the road and now I’m in a traffic jam and I can’t see the other end of it. What’s going on? I’m still thinking I might catch this flight so I’m trying to get around everyone and this bus seems to know what he’s doing so I’m following him; we’re in the wrong lane at this point but there is no oncoming traffic. There’s a lot more people on the road, Should I be heading into the “fire”? The a traffic cop stops us, lets the bus through but tries to explain in Spanis to me and then leaves me for some other problem; when I see he’s busy I leave and then I see the problem so merge back into stopped traffic.

Guardiabridge The problem is there’s a bridge ahead so there has got of be some kind of a problem with it. But there are still refugees people coming off the bridge so it’s not collapsed. By very illegally parking and then walking to the bridge (it’s two bridges: an old one and a new one) and talking to a partially-English speaking officer and some others I determined I need to ditch my rental and cross the bridge. Oh, and at this point I’m pretty sure I’m not getting on that plane today.

Because the bridge will not be open until tomorrow and maybe not until the afternoon! But I guess even though they are concerned about the lower supports it’s okay for people and not cars. Did I mention it’s only 7 kilometers (4-5 miles) to the airport at this point?

Since then I’ve done some research, I believe this was the Guardia Bridge over the Tempisque River, ‘ve read on-line (nothing official or I’d quote that) that’s it’s 50 or 100 feet down. When I was on the bridge I’d say the water was 8-12 feet below but I’m not the best guesser at those kinds of guesstimates. Notice on the map (direct link) that this is the main road to get from the Nicoya Peninsula to the Liberia Airport. Zoom out and you’ll see it’s the only road to cross the river when it has any depth of water. That’s not really try if you zoom out farther you’ll see the huge Friendship Bridge (image) but since another trapped person told me she was going to San Jose (the long way) and she was avoiding that bridge for some reason that didn’t translate but I knew it was going to add hours (4-5?) to her trip it must be a good reason. And it turns out that this Tempisque River is the same river that forms the start of the Nicoya Bay (which, with the Pacific Ocean, makes the Nicoya peninsula). Continue reading →

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Posted in Costa Rica 2008

Tagged airline, airport, avalanche, bridge, Costa Rica, delta, earthquake, flood, flooding, Guardia Bridge, Liberia, Pacific Ocean, San Jose, Tamarindo, Tempisque River, walking

The Ground Shook!!! Costa Rica Earthquake!

Posted on September 4, 2008 | Leave a comment

Something just happened. I’d say a huge semi-truck or two just drove by too fast and went through the crazy potholes (or something) but that’s not really possible where I am let alone it would have had to had been a 180 wheeled truck since it lasted a bit. It really shook the place for at least 4-5 seconds (it seemed much longer but I’m guessing it wasn’t) with a short ones a few seconds later about 22 or 23 minutes after midnight. Afterwards, it sounded like a few doors opened up at the hotel but no chatter of what might have happened. I don’t know how common earthquakes are here. I know I’ve never felt anything like it!

I’ve been looking on-line and finally found some data! It was a 4.3 Magnitude earthquake!!!! Not sure how big that is, but I’m from Michigan so…

The event id for this is “us2008wnan” as it’s official designation (I guess). This is the closest seismogram I could find from a drum recorder (are they still actually drums?) which happens to be the Volcano at Rincon de la Vieja, you can clearly see in the second block of 15 minutes after midnight the needle went a little crazy. Here’s some info on reading the seismograms.

Looking at the attached right-hand image (the “A” is the estimated center), I’m guessing it centered about 25-30 miles from here (Tamarindo). The smaller left-hand image has some time/date info with location info (and no other earthquake boxes for the last week in Costa Rica).

This was at 10.490Â°N, 85.851Â°W, a 4.3 magnitude and 39.7 miles (63.9 km) deep. Could this have been picked up as far os New Mexico or Oregon? Or were those coincidental marks on their graphs? Finding this I’m going to say “yes” (I found this in the morning).

I’ll keep adding data as I find it! It’s been two hours I’ve been collecting info, I’m off to bed, gotta get up in the morning to catch a flight.