Tag: quake

  • Magnitude 7.1 quake strikes New Caledonia

    Magnitude 7.1 quake strikes New Caledonia

    A 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck Saturday in the Pacific Ocean to the east of New Caledonia, the US Geological Survey said, a day after a major quake hit the same area.

    The epicentre was 35 kilometres (22 miles) deep and located about 300 kilometres (190 miles) east of the New Caledonian archipelago, it said.

    “It lasted maybe two seconds, not too big,” said Nancy Jack, manager of the beachfront Friendly Beach Bungalows on the Vanuatu island of Kana, adding that no large waves could be seen.

    A 6.5-magnitude aftershock hit the same area minutes after the initial tremor, which struck at 12:51 pm (0151 GMT).

    Any tsunami waves are expected to be less than 0.3 metres (one foot) high, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said in an update.

    The waves may reach the Pacific islands of Fiji, Kiribati, Vanuatu, and Wallis and Futuna, it said, after earlier issuing a warning for coasts within 300 kilometres of the epicentre.

    On Friday, a 7.7-magnitude quake in the same area sent people scrambling for higher ground on several Pacific islands for fear of giant waves. A tsunami warning was lifted hours later.

    AFP

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  • Turkey quake fuels conspiracy posts on US antenna station

    Turkey quake fuels conspiracy posts on US antenna station

    Scientists have for years been refuting claims that the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program, with its Alaska facility boasting 180 radio antennae, is a US government-backed programme to weaponise the atmosphere and subjugate the population.

    The series of earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria on February 6, killing tens of thousands of people, gave rise to a new variant of the theory on social media in various languages.

    It has been dismissed by experts as science fiction.

    – ‘Crazy’ earthquake claims –

    Some users cited flashes of light before the quake as evidence they were artificially generated by HAARP.

    Some claimed it was to punish Turkey for resisting the admission of new member countries to NATO.

    “This is so crazy. It’s like asking if the earthquake was caused by Bugs Bunny digging for carrots,” said David Keith, professor of applied physics at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

    “There is simply no known mechanism for anything remotely like HAARP to have any impact on earthquakes.”

    HAARP sends radio waves to heat electrons in the ionosphere, the top layer of Earth’s atmosphere, to study their effects on communications systems.

    Its waves are not big enough to reach Turkey.

    Quakes are caused by movements of the Earth’s crust.

    Experts told AFP lights are commonly seen during earthquakes.

    Theories vary about their origin. In some cases, they come from power lines or electricity stations shaken by the quake.

    HAARP was run by the United States Air Force and Navy before being handed over in 2015 to the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

    Michael Lockwood, professor of space environment physics at the University of Reading, said claims about HAARP being used as a weapon may have stemmed from the programme initially using radio waves to communicate with submarines — a function that became obsolete after the Cold War.

    This history “got blown up into the farcical idea that HAARP is some form of a weapon”, Lockwood said.

    “Some form of social mind control is the usual favourite but generating earthquakes is one that I hadn’t heard before.”

    – Climate change theories –

    Numerous social media posts have claimed HAARP is used to engineer storms and heatwaves.

    Some recent ones suggested the aim is to create climate change so that authorities can restrict people’s activities or even reduce the population.

    Some cited a patent for a proposed device to heat parts of the ionosphere for defence purposes.

    Filed in 1985 at the height of the Cold War, the document claims the technology could be used for “missile or aircraft destruction” or “weather modification”.

    But the patent has since expired and there is no evidence the technology in it was developed.

    HAARP’s transmitters send radio waves from 80 kilometres to more than 500 km (50-310 miles) above the Earth’s surface — far too high for such signals to affect weather or climate.

    “The idea that technology can somehow bring about these extreme events makes no sense,” Ella Gilbert, a meteorologist at the British Antarctic Survey, told AFP.

    “It is technically extremely difficult to influence such a large, complex and chaotic system as the weather.”

    – False Covid connection –

    Other posts claim signals from HAARP can hit Earth, disrupting communications and power, and even harming people’s health.

    David Hysell, a professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Cornell University, said HAARP was no more dangerous than any other electrical or radio station.

    Researchers have identified similarities between the HAARP claims and a wave of conspiracy theories about 5G telecommunications that emerged during the Covid pandemic.

    Millions of people viewed Facebook posts claiming to show spacecraft from HAARP “emitting 5G radiation which contains the coronavirus”.

    The posts showed a photo of a flying object leaving contrails. An analysis by AFP Fact Check indicated the photo was a montage.

    “I don’t know where the conspiracy theories surrounding HAARP come from,” said Hysell.

    “I think people confuse the research purpose of HAARP, which is to study naturally occurring hazards in space, with the operations of the facility itself.”

    AFP

  • Anger rises as Turkey-Syria quake deaths hit 37,000

    Anger rises as Turkey-Syria quake deaths hit 37,000

    Rescuers in Turkey pulled several children alive from collapsed buildings on Monday, a week after the country’s worst earthquake in modern history, but hopes of many more survivors were fading and criticism of the authorities grew, Reuters reports.

    In one city, rescuers were digging a tunnel to reach a grandmother, mother and daughter, all from one family, who appeared to have survived the 7.8 magnitude Feb. 6 quake and aftershock that have killed more than 37,000 in Turkey and Syria.

    But others were bracing for the inevitable scaling down of operations as low temperatures reduced the already slim chances of survival with some Polish rescuers announcing they would leave on Wednesday.

    In the shattered Syrian city of Aleppo, U.N. aid chief Martin Griffiths said the rescue phase was “coming to a close”, with the focus switching to shelter, food and schooling.

    In a sign of hope, a 13-year-old was pulled out alive after spending 182 hours under the rubble of a collapsed building in Turkey’s southern Hatay province on Monday, his head braced, and covered for warmth, before he was moved into an ambulance.

    A young girl named Miray was recovered alive in the southeastern Turkish city of Adiyaman, officials said, while state broadcaster TRT Haber said a 10-year-old girl was rescued in the southern Turkish province of Kahramanmaras.

    At least two other children and three adults were also reported to have been rescued.

    In one dramatic rescue attempt in the Turkish city of Kahramanmaras, rescuers said they had contact with a grandmother, mother and baby trapped in a room in the remains of three-storey building. Rescuers were digging a second tunnel to reach them, after a first route was blocked.

    “I have a very strong feeling we are going to get them,” said Burcu Baldauf, head of the Turkish voluntary healthcare team. “It’s already a miracle. After seven days, they are there with no water, no food and in good condition.”

    On the same street, emergency workers covered a body in a black bag. “This is your brother,” one grieving woman said, with another wailing. “No, no.”

    The Turkish toll now exceeds the 31,643 killed in a quake in 1939, the Disaster and Emergency Management Authority said, making it the worst quake in Turkey’s modern history.

    The total death toll in Syria, a nation ravaged by more than a decade of civil war, has reached 5,714, including those who died in a rebel enclave and government-held areas.

    It is the sixth most deadly natural disaster this century, behind the 2005 tremor that killed at least 73,000 in Pakistan.

    Turkey faces a bill of up to $84.1 billion, a business group said.

  • Bodies of Cyprus students killed in Turkey quake flown home

    Bodies of Cyprus students killed in Turkey quake flown home

    The bodies of seven Cypriot students killed in the powerful earthquake that hit Turkey have been returned home, with Turkish media reporting that 19 children in the group died.

    Two dozen children aged 11 to 14 from the island, along with 10 parents, four teachers and a volleyball coach, were in the southern Turkish city of Adiyaman when Monday’s quake hit.

    The 7.8-magnitude tremor, whose epicentre was near Gaziantep, about 130 kilometres (80 miles) southwest of Adiyaman, has claimed the lives of more than 21,000 people in Turkey and Syria.

    The children had been taking part in a school volleyball tournament and had been staying in a hotel in Adiyaman that was completely destroyed by the quake.

    “The bodies of 19 students have been found under the rubble,” a correspondent for Turkey’s NTV channel said.

    A plane arrived in Cyprus the early hours of Friday with the bodies of the seven children as well as two teachers and a parent, local TV images showed.

    Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar welcomed the bodies accompanied by other government and military officials of the breakaway Turkish Cypriot statelet of northern Cyprus.

    Officials on Friday confirmed 16 members of the group had died.

    The tragedy has devastated the small breakaway statelet on the Mediterranean island of 270,000 residents.

    The region’s government had declared a national mobilisation, hiring a private plane so they could join the search-and-rescue effort for the children.

  • Turkey, Syria quake could affect 23 million people – WHO

    Turkey, Syria quake could affect 23 million people – WHO

    Up to 23 million people could be affected by the massive earthquake that has killed thousands in Turkey and Syria, the WHO warned on Tuesday, promising long-term assistance.

    “Event overview maps show that potentially 23 million people are exposed, including around five million vulnerable populations,” the World Health Organization’s senior emergencies officer Adelheid Marschang said.

    “Civilian infrastructure and potentially health infrastructure have been damaged across the affected region, mainly in Turkey and northwest Syria,” she said.

    The WHO “considers that the main unmet needs may be in Syria in the immediate and mid-term,” Marschang told the WHO’s executive committee in Geneva.

    She spoke as rescuers in Turkey and Syria braved freezing cold, aftershocks and collapsing buildings, as they dug for survivors buried by a string of earthquakes that killed more than 5,000 people.

    “It is now a race against time,” said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, explaining that the UN health agency was urgently sending aid to the area.

    “We’re mobilising emergency supplies and we have activated the WHO network of emergency medical teams to provide essential health care for the injured and most vulnerable.”

    Disaster agencies said several thousand buildings were flattened in cities across a vast Turkey-Syria border region — pouring misery on an area already plagued by war, insurgency, refugee crises and a recent cholera outbreak.

    Through the night, survivors used their bare hands to pick over the twisted ruins of multi-storey apartment blocks — trying to save family, friends and anyone else sleeping inside when the first massive 7.8-magnitude quake struck early Monday.

    The situation is particularly dire in northern Syria, which has already been decimated by years of war.

    “The movement of aid through the border into northwest Syria is likely to be or is already disrupted due to the damage caused by the earthquake,” Marschang said.

    “This in itself would be a huge crisis already.”

    She addressed a special meeting on the tragedy, which held a minute’s silence for the victims.

    The WHO chief vowed that the agency would “work closely with all partners to support authorities in both countries in the critical hours and days ahead, and in the months and years to come as both countries recover and rebuild.”

    (AFP)