36 thoughts on “Chile earthquake kills 76 and triggers tsunami”

  1. Thanks Lucia. My in-laws live on Oahu, their house in on the beach; but on the North Shore. Everyone is still asleep there so I’ve not heard anything from them.

  2. Liza– There should be enough time for that Tsunami to be monitored. Still, I hope people will take precautions and move inland.

    Believe it or not, for some reason, when I was in my pre-teens I had Tsunami nightmares. I always somehow ran up very tall hills and to the top of a building and rang a bell… then the water came. Then, I woke up.

    I lived in Illinois which has no Tsunami threat. Weird, huh? I must have see it in a movie.

  6. Lucia, I had tsunami nightmares too. 🙂
    And here I am; about 8miles inland from the beach; in Southern California!

  8. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/27/chile-earthquake-tsunami_n_479393.html

    10:30 AM ET — Tsunami warnings in effect. The following countries have been listed:
    CHILE / PERU / ECUADOR / COLOMBIA / ANTARCTICA / PANAMA / COSTA RICA / NICARAGUA / PITCAIRN / HONDURAS / EL SALVADOR / GUATEMALA / FR. POLYNESIA / MEXICO / COOK ISLANDS / KIRIBATI / KERMADEC IS / NIUE / NEW ZEALAND / TONGA / AMERICAN SAMOA / SAMOA / JARVIS IS. / WALLIS-FUTUNA / TOKELAU / FIJI / AUSTRALIA / HAWAII / PALMYRA IS. / TUVALU / VANUATU / HOWLAND-BAKER / NEW CALEDONIA / JOHNSTON IS. / SOLOMON IS. / NAURU / MARSHALL IS. / MIDWAY IS. / KOSRAE / PAPUA NEW GUINEA / POHNPEI / WAKE IS. / CHUUK / RUSSIA / MARCUS IS. / INDONESIA / N. MARIANAS / GUAM / YAP / BELAU / JAPAN / PHILIPPINES / CHINESE TAIPEI.

    Of course, I’ve emailed friends. Several spend weekends at the beach….

  10. Just spoke to the father in law. He’s not leaving the house until the wave gets to Hilo on the big island; and then he can gauge the size or danger. (His house is two story and is built with double care-pilons down into the rock/coral) He has 35 mins after that to get to high ground before it affects Oahu, plus he’s on the North shore side facing away. He said the rest of the neighborhood is already gone anyway. Forget that he says…not going to sit for hours just waiting somewhere else. He also said it will be low tide when it comes through too; so the effect might be even less. And, Mother in law is no where to be found. It was her “girls night” last night and isn’t answering the phone. LOL!

  11. Yah know… I’d take a hike with less than 35 minutes to go. If I had a van or truck, I’d pack it up, take a picnic basket, sunglasses, sunscreen etc. and drive to high ground. Maybe it’s just the memory of all those tsunami nightmares, but I’d be out of there!

  12. I was googling. There was a tsunami in El Salvador when I lived there. I was 1 yo. The height was 0.5 meters. That was probably taller than me. 🙂

    (Maybe people talked about it?)

  15. Sounds good Lucia, that’s what I’d do too except it was the middle of the night early morning when the warning came. lol

  16. This is indeed an enormous quake, but, working in the media myself, I should say that some outlets are getting a bit carried away here. While the quake seems to have been orders of magnitude greater than that which caused so much damage in Haiti, the Chileans are much better prepared. My 12-year-old daughter, who lives in Santiago, managed to sleep through the whole thing, and, while her mother soon dragged her out onto the street, damage seems in the capital to have been expensive but rarely fatal. The Concepcion area was much closer to the epicentre and more than 100 people have been killed there. The Chileans have high building standards, expecting as they do to be hit by major quakes every quarter century or so, and well-trained disaster response teams. Fuerza Chile!

  17. I should add that by “carried away”, I was referring to at least one media report saying Chile had been “devastated”, which is complete nonsense. Obviously there is huge and serious damage to infrastructure, as well as loss of life, but I find this tendency to depict countries in places such as Latin America as perpetually helpless victims to be misinformed. No one on this blog, and certainly not Lucia, has made these assumptions of course.

  19. “working in the media myself, I should say that some outlets are getting a bit carried away here.”

    Does that sound familiar!

    For the record email from father in law on the North Shore:

    “”About 2 PM. The ”all clear” had been given.
    However, as I was taking my shower ( 5 PM) out doors I noticed that the tide seemed very, very low. So low that the ”island” was at least a foot or more above the water line. ( The ”rock” was over 3 feet high-there’s a chunk of coral that sticks out of the water most days in front of the house we call “the rock”). I then noticed that all the reefs were exposed. I knew it was full moon and that meant extreme tides, but it seemed much lower than I had ever seen.

    For the next several hours until after sunset ( 6:30 PM), the water would go out and leave reef more exposed than I had never seen, Then within 5 minutes, the water was back up approaching the wall (back porch). The water level difference had to be at least 4+ feet, much more than the normal high and low tides. The TV guys said the tsunami was all over, but then I noticed they were showing the same thing on the Ala Wai canal in Waikiki. Water coming in like a river, then going out again like a river. The whole cycle was about 10 minutes , from super high tide, to super low tide, and then back again. Like I said, it ran for a couple of hours.
    If you did not know the water levels here, you never would have noticed it. Anyway, wish I had had a camera, but then I don’t even know how to work one of those ”new fangled ” thingies.””

  20. Lucia.

    Yes. But an earthquake in New Madrid isn’t going to cause a tsunami!

    I know! I’m a geologist – I was just being a little bit silly.
    Mind you, The Mississippi is a big river…

  21. Global warming / Climate Change caused it???

    1. http://showbiz99.com/chile-earthquake-2010-and-tsunami-expectations-in-several-countires/

    “Chile Earthquake 2010 And Tsunami Expectations In Several Countires” … “During the past few years, natural disasters have become a regular phenomenon. The analysts are of the view that these catastrophes are the outcome of global warming. Resultantly abnormal climatic conditions are observed throughout the globe like earthquakes, tornados, tsunamis, historic snowfalls etc. It is now inevitable for the world community to join hands against increasing global warming. For this purpose, all the countries of the world, especially the developed and industrialized countries have to make hectic efforts to lessen the adverse effects on the climate.”

    2. http://www.greenfudge.org/2010/02/28/global-weather-chaos-earthquakes-tsunamis-and-flooding/

    “Global Weather Chaos: Earthquakes, Tsunamis, and Flooding”… “Has the weather gotten crazy enough yet for you skeptics to believe in global warming? Or does there have to be thousands of casualties added on to the increasing death tolls? If the weather keeps progressing like it has been in the past few months, I hope some people will start taking it as a serious wake-up call, because things will only get worse from here on out. ”

    3. http://www.realclimate.org/?comments_popup=3041 (blog comment 451)

    “Is there any possibility that an earthquake near a shoreline could be triggered by a rise in sea level?”

    4. http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474978071318 (comment)

    “7.0 Richter hits Japan’s Okinawa Island, 8.3 Richter hits Chile, Iceberg brakes off Antarctic and heavy snow in Northeast U.S.A.? Please watch my video It’s about climate change (extreme weather conditions), earth catastrophe and our planet as we lives in.”

  24. The New Madrid earth quake did change the course of the Mississippi River.

    Also thanks for throwing in the “those of you who pray” before the prayer request. As a long suffering atheist living amongst sometimes arrogant believers I appreciate the acknowledgement that some of us don’t try to send magic messages to deities by closing our eyes and thinking.

    Did that sound too sarcastic? Maybe I’m too sensitive on the topic.

    Thanks any way.

  26. > Did Gavin answer comment 3?

    Go see for yourself, see comment 451 – http://www.realclimate.org/?comments_popup=3041

    As of this exact moment, about 2 days after the question was posted, there’s is no inline response from Gavin or from anybody else.

    There are now about 100+ comments on various other topics after comment 451. I haven’t read them all, but scan through them. I did also search for “level” and “quake” to see if *anybody* had responded to question 451, and couldn’t find any response. So it’s possible somebody has, but I doubt it.

  27. And for the record, it’s not like warmists didn’t predict earthquakes and tsunamis (of course due to global warming) prior to Chile or Haiti.

    e.g.
    1. http://www.pbs.org/strangedays/episodes/onedegreefactor/care/index.html
    “Extreme Weather”… “How can weather wreak more havoc or more damage? A hurricane is a hurricane, a tornado a tornado, a tsunami a tsunami when they wreak havoc and do damage it can be devastating even without a severe jump in temperature.” (emphasis added)

    2. http://www.livescience.com/environment/070830_gw_quakes.html
    “Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis and landslides are some of the additional catastrophes that climate change and its rising sea levels and melting glaciers could bring, a geologist says. ”

    3. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/06/global-warming-natural-disasters-conference ”
    Climate change: melting ice will trigger wave of natural disasters

    Scientists at a London conference next week will warn of earthquakes, avalanches and volcanic eruptions as the atmosphere heats up and geology is altered. Even Britain could face being struck by tsunamis”

    Which includes a fantastic quote:

    “Maybe the Earth is trying to tell us something,” added McGuire, who is one of the organisers of UCL’s Climate Forcing of Geological Hazards conference, which will open on 15 September.

    4. http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/aug/07/disasters

    “The Earth fights back” …

    “Never mind higher temperatures, climate change has a few nastier surprises in store. Bill McGuire says we can also expect more earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides and tsunamis”

  28. Volcanoes?

    If the shore shifts, some cities will be closer to the water than they are, and those specific cities will be more tsunami prone even if the number stay constant. But volcanoes? What would cause the earthquakes?

    Oh well…

  29. > more tsunami prone

    I think you mean more tsunami vulnerable, rather than prone?

    The chance of tsunami should be the same, but the damage might be more, due to a higher starting water level.

    The strangest part about this, is if you check news stories from 2005, after the Boxing Day Tsunami, there are AGW outlets, saying it’s only skeptics/denialists who try would link global warming to earthquakes- and then as an attempt to discredit warmists – but since then warmists have themselves starting linking Haiti/Chile/earthquakes-in-general to AGW.

  31. Going back on myself slightly, I suppose that it’s technically possible for a city that wasn’t vulnerable to tsunamis to become vulnerable, if the sea-level rises enough. You know, when the whole Antarctic melts, and cities like Wichita or Kansas City become beach resorts.

    However, I don’t think that’s likely. Even the most pessimistic AGW forecasts aren’t predicting anything like that in the next century. And it would certainly would be premature to attribute current events to that kind of sea level rise – I’m pretty sure the sea level rise to date hasn’t been on that scale, because I think that we would have noticed… 🙂

  32. .. then Kansas City or somewhere like that is now one the coast

    .

    Well, I don’t think anyone is suggesting Missouri will ever become ocean side property!

    To the surprise of some people who owned lake side property, the level of Lake Michigan was higher in the 80s than the 60s.

  33. 20+ years ago, when global warming and sea level rise was starting to get some press coverage, I remember reading an article in a college or departmental magazine (?), about “Cambridge on Sea” (as in the Cambridge in the middle of England).

    I remember it because it was written by physical chemist that I knew. I don’t remember much of the article, I think it was all introductory stuff about the issues of sea level rise – I am however pretty sure that his conclusion that Cambridge becoming a coastal city was not something we need to worry about.

  35. “But their unnamed daughter cheated death after the bullet from her dad’s handgun missed her vital organs.

    Paramedics rushed her to hospital covered in blood when police alerted by worried neighbours discovered the massacre three days later.

    The youngster is recovering in hospital in the town of Goya in the northern Argentine province of Corrientes, where doctors say she is out of danger.”

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1254619/Baby-girl-survives-shot-chest-parents-global-warming-suicide-pact.html?ITO=1490#ixzz0gyDzxdQj

    Warm = Life. God Bless You, little one. 🙂

    Andrew

  36. I have several ocean front properties in KC MO I’ll let go of for a decent price (just in case).

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