Worldwide Quake Activity Ramping Up?

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sudsmaster

sudsmaster

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One thing that scientists say they learned from the devastating quake/tsunami in Indonesia a couple of years ago was how the whole planet "rang" seismically from the jolt in that region. This was followed up with reports that they were reconsidering their theories, and were conjecturing that quakes on one side of the globe could in fact trigger seismic movement on the other side.

Well, let's see. A 5.2 quake in Hawaii a couple of days ago. A 3.2 in Oakland the other night. A 7.9 in Peru today... are things starting to ramp up again?
 
Believe it or not, I had a few friends on vacation in Cuzco, Peru. When I heard about the earthquake I dashed off an e-mail to them. They said that they didn't feel a thing! It seems that the earthquake was more centered on the central Peru coastline.

It has been some time since a major quake. Who knows what faults are doing even as we speak!
 
There was a local guy in the Bay Area whose theories around earthquakes would routinely be discounted by scientists but he was right about predicting them at least as often as the scientists were.

If his theory is correct, the Peru activity will start working its way up the plate and going forward we'll be seeing activity of varying strength all the way to Alaska as a result of what happened in Peru. It does make sense, since one plate has just had a rather major shift and has put pressure on the section of the plate further along. Kind of a domino effect. We'll have to watch and see. Mexico had a decent sized one along the coast recently so now we'll need to see if this activity starts creeping up the Pacific coast.
 
That news topic...

is probably good news for the owner of the Utah Mine that tragically collapsed recently.

Remember how this guy was yelling to the media that "this was an earth quake" when in FACT it was a very dangerous (and greedy) process used for mining that caused the collapse.

Still the republican owned media continued to spread lies that it was an earth quake. Could it be that the mine owner is a bush croney?

What does corruption look like on the face of a person?

 
Yes, I have to wonder about a mining technique that purposefully relies upon man-caused collapses to get all the ore out. Would I want to be hundreds of feet below the surface of the earth in a chamber with a low ceiling, held up by nothing more than a column of coal that I plan on removing to cause the chamber to collapse in on itself?

Nope!
 
The head of the Bureau of Mines had to be a recess appointment because not only Democrats and many Republicans opposed him, but also professionals from the mining industry and the unions. He had run a mine in Pennsylvania, I think, where there was a bad accident. Last night on the news I heard that the death rate from mining had been falling for decades, but now we are back to 1926 statistics in terms of lives lost per year in the industry. How can a group of people, supposedly with religious values, treat the lives of others as if they did not matter? I wish the moderator of the first debate before the 2000 election had asked Bush to expand on his answer to the question of "Who is your favorite philosopher?"
 
Mines

Stickler is actually "assistant secretary of labor for mine
safety and health".

From a website thread addressing the mine collapse in Utah
there is a link to the following Salon article with the full
quote/story):


The first few paragraphs of the article:

By Bill Hangley Jr., March 19, 2004

It has been almost three years since I spoke with the president of the United States, and I still get mail about it.

It was July 4, 2001, and we were both at one of those things that the late historian Daniel Boorstin would have labeled a "pseudo event": a church picnic in Philadelphia, designed to help promote George W. Bush's faith-based policies. Because I had serious misgivings about the president's performance to that point, my own involvement in the whole operation had left me feeling a bit like a pseudo person, so when I had the chance to shake Bush's hand, I said, "Mr. President, I hope you only serve one term. I'm very disappointed in your work so far."

His smiling response was swift: "Who cares what you think?"

In retrospect, it's an excellent question. I made a list, and it's pretty short: My family cares what I think. My friends care. My various employers have cared at various times, as have a generous handful of teachers and mentors. But that's about it. In the big picture, I'm nobody from nowhere, and the marketplace for my ideas is pretty slim.

A president, of course, is in the opposite position. Everybody cares what he thinks. Huge numbers of people devote themselves to shaping his thoughts and putting them into action. Most of my thoughts evaporate in conversation. His change lives around the globe. So I can understand the pleasure that flashed in his eye when he spoke to me. Mine was an easy lob; his was a smashing return.
 
Whoa, the West coast is not in any kind of reassuring shape, is it? Does it look that way all of the time? Actually, the East coast is overdue for a little earth shaking event of our own. The last 2 times, the area was rocked from the big Charleston, SC and the Missouri quakes. We have little earthquakes from time to time up around Columbia, MD, but they are so faint, I really think it is people having great sex. John and I added earthquake coverage to our homeowner's insurance policies. It's not that much, but it has a $5000.00 deductable. It's 5K or the price of the whole house, but what are you going to do? The insurance lady said that a lot of other people have been adding the coverage. Much of the construction here is brick and block and that does not have any give when shaken or stirred.
 
Earthquake Insurance....

Don't get me started on that. After paying the extra premium for earthquake insurance for several years, Allstate decided to discontinue the coverage. No refund, of course. They got in, got theirs, and got out.
 
In California we have state-sponsored supplemental earthquake insurance, but it has a lot of gotchas.

For a fee of about 75% of your regular homeowner's coverage, you get:

15% deductible on assessed value of your home. So, if you have a $300,000 structure (not unusual in CA), the deductible is $45,000. If the damage is more than that, then the state will pay for repairs. However, if the state runs out of money because of widespread earthquake damage and claims, they might not pay much of anything at all. Plus, if there is a quake and a lot of claims, even in you are not in the quake zone, your policy may be surcharged 20% without notice. You can get a lower (10%) deductible but it will cost you another 20% or so in premiums. In other words, it's not cheap, your're still going to pay thousands if a quake hits, and it's not guaranteed to pay all your costs even after you meet the high deductible. Last year, however, because so few people were getting this coverage, the state lowered the premiums about 20%.

So I decided to get the coverage this year, just on a hunch. We'll see. Before this I put a lot of time and money into a seismic retrofit of the foundation - probably money well spent. There's more that could be done, such as flex hose from the gas main to the house, bracing all the bookcases to the walls, emergency automatic gas shutoff valve on meter, etc etc etc. Probably a better investment than the earthquake coverage, esp since this is a one story wood structure on relatively level ground (very slight grade).
 
Homeowner insurance

PBS "NOW" program last night was about insurance companies
low-balling claims, etc. Allstate made an average of $82
million a year in the 10 years before 1995. Since then, it
now averages $2.7 billion - and does not pay replacement
values. If you fight them, then they end up offering less.
They call it "Helping Hands" for 90% of the policy holders
and "Boxing Gloves" for the 10% that resist the lowball
offers. More info at www.pbs.org
 
Allstate also wanted to start a program in Texas called "Shared Risk".
It works like this, you still pay your current premium for homeowners insurance, and if you have a claim, they only cover 50% of the damage. Their take on this? If people want to live near a coast line, then they'll have to pay for the pleasure of doing so!" Plus they claim that they are losing SO MUCH money due to recent claims. Lose Money? My ass! You can count on them making huge profits!
The state derailed them in that program. And Allstate retailiated by offering no new policies in Texas.

 
I'm insured with CSAA - the California branch of AAA. They pay something like replacement cost, I forget the wording. Plus a certain amount for code upgrades. The bill currently runs about $1400/yr, with another $920 for equake coverage. The roof is wood shake, which drives up the insurance cost by about $200/yr, or so, primarily because it's a more expensive roof to replace, plus perhaps the increased fire hazard. Yeah, it's on my list of things to replace, probably with the more usual composition shingles.

Speaking of fire... last night about 11 pm I heard sirens, close by the neighborhood. Looked down the block, no sign of them. Five minutes later, more sirens, again close, coming from different direction. Still no sign of them on the block. Five more minutes, more sirens. At this point, I looked up and say a big plume of smoke coming from the southeast. So I got the bicycle out, and sure enough there was a big fire just about five blocks away, on the main drag. Sporting goods store, single story, completely gutted. No less than 9 fire engines on the scene, one with a 40 foot ladder with a guy on top straying down on the conflagration. Equal number of police and other fire dept vehicles. I think they saved the neighboring buildings, one of which is a newish-looking apartment house. The first thing that ran through my mind, since the fire seemed to spread over the place so completely: insurance scam arson.
 
goprog, I think David Brancaccio is one of the most snugglelicious people I have ever seen.

I heard this morning that there was an earthquake last night in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. You would almost think that the planet's warranty had expired.
 

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