Was on the 6th floor of a tower. Shaking lasted almost 2 minutes. There was no damage as far as I could tell (Medellín) but they still evacuated everyone to inspect the building. City is in a bit of chaos, people are fine but unsettled, and the comms lines are clogged with people presumably calling their families.
Was a bit tense to see my phone alerts going off over and over, continually increasing the estimate of the earthquake strength, followed by the shaking getting worse.
For people who don't know, those phone alerts give you literally like 5 seconds of heads up. By the time I finished reading the first message, the shaking had already started. And I got the message while I was holding my phone and using it.
That's unavoidable. We now have shake alerts in CA but if the quake happens on the Hayward fault across the bay San Francisco isn't going to get much warning no matter what anyone does. By best estimates we may get 15s of warning.
You always need to act on it. Get an earthquake alert? Run outside. You can go back if it was a false alert.
In Mexico City the seismic alert gives like a minute (sensors are on the coast off Guerrero 350km away). Communities closer to the usual epicenter get almost no warning.
The phone alerts sound quite dystopian and unsettling. As if the earth shaking and feeling of imminent doom wasn’t chaotic enough, now you have yet another element of annoyance and distress added to the mix as a cherry on top. Just enough of a distraction in a life/death situation to tilt the scales in a negative direction.
Didn't feel it but apparently it lasted several minutes and there was a lot of panic here in Bogota. Could see lots of people going out of their apartments in pijamas.
Also TIL that in 2023, while in a smaller earthquake webcam streamers (adult entretainers) went out of their apartments in lingerie.
The national paper has a bunch of articles above the fold: https://www.eltiempo.com .
20+ confirmed dead in Pereira, a third-tier city with population of ~500,000. Many wounded.
Whenever I want to follow what's happening with a natural disaster like this, where many friends and family are potentially affected, I always use the Wikipedia page, which tends to have the most up-to-date information very quickly. It helps me avoid zooming in on the news and seeing rehashed articles posted on multiple websites.
I have family in this area in Valle del Cauca. We've heard from my immediate family and they're okay, but communication is spotty and we don't have a great sense of how bad things are yet. We fly into Matecaña International Airport in Pereira and it looks like the terminal had major damage and at least a few deaths. Shocking and horrifying stuff.
Statistical anomaly detected: this morning I woke up from an earth quake in my dream. It was powerful enough to really sway the buildings and room I was in. Im in Texas though, but >= 7.0 earthquakes only happen a handful of times a year.
when was this? USGS shows no earthquake in Texas. Are you trying to say that Texas as >= 7.0 earthquakes a handful of times a year? According to wiki[0], Texas has never had anything close to a 7.0
I hope in my lifetime we discover a way to predict earthquakes better, the danger to life from them would be significantly less if there was sufficient notification.
We can alert for storms, tornadoes, volcanoes, hurricanes, typhoons, and even somewhat extraterrestrial disasters like asteroids.
The earth itself must move in predictable patterns similar to the weather, and I'm sure there is decades of research around this I'll never even approach to understanding. Just surprising to have such a big knowledge gap that affects humanity year round
Really I suspect that's the only hard part. If we had accurate 3d models of the structure (well 4d, 3d models over time) it would probably be reasonably easy to estimate how much strain it can take, and how much strain there is... Maybe not predict-to-the-second levels of detail but at least to predict that a quake we see is likely to be a precursor to a much larger one or is likely that peak.
But getting that data seems... practically impossible at our current tech level.
5% within a week is a very high set of odds for such rare events. Or to look at it from the other more relevant direction 70% of magnitude 7 or larger quakes have detected foreshocks...
Thankfully, it's a fairly deep (>100km) subduction zone earthquake. That means less immediate damage from ground acceleration than it could be from an earthquake of that size. However, a very large area may have seen significant liquefaction of soils in valleys and landslides on steep slopes. I'd wager we won't hear about most of the damage initially in the press.
A few days ago, Egypt experienced its most violent earthquake in a long time. It occurred near the Suez Canal and lasted for about 30 seconds. It was absolutely terrifying.
Is there something like a domino theory for earth quakes? Like first some stress releases in Venezuella, then the same stress travells further up the boundary, triggering a earth quake in a different region? Working its way up the plate boundary towards a big one like a fuse?
There's at least one[a] town/city called San Jose in at least[b] 4 US states. Not to mention other things named such (e.g. 2 different San Jose creeks in California, neither of which is in the San Jose metro - one in LA and one in Monterey)
[a] there appears to be 2 towns in new mexico called San Jose
[a.2] Illinois amuses me because there's a San Jose and St Joseph both, and both are small.
[b] There appears to be a tiny (pop 15) town called San Jose in Texas, but it's unclear if that's officially incorporated, etc.
Was a bit tense to see my phone alerts going off over and over, continually increasing the estimate of the earthquake strength, followed by the shaking getting worse.
For people who don't know, those phone alerts give you literally like 5 seconds of heads up. By the time I finished reading the first message, the shaking had already started. And I got the message while I was holding my phone and using it.
In Mexico City the seismic alert gives like a minute (sensors are on the coast off Guerrero 350km away). Communities closer to the usual epicenter get almost no warning.
That alone can help save people.
5 seconds is still time purchased for those who use it wisely.
Also TIL that in 2023, while in a smaller earthquake webcam streamers (adult entretainers) went out of their apartments in lingerie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Colombia_earthquake
e: first time I dreamed of an earthquake
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Texas
We can alert for storms, tornadoes, volcanoes, hurricanes, typhoons, and even somewhat extraterrestrial disasters like asteroids.
The earth itself must move in predictable patterns similar to the weather, and I'm sure there is decades of research around this I'll never even approach to understanding. Just surprising to have such a big knowledge gap that affects humanity year round
But getting that data seems... practically impossible at our current tech level.
That we can basically do. "Observations show that the chance of an earthquake being followed by a larger one nearby and within a week is about 5%."
https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-probability-earthquake-a-fore...
It is an incredibly safe bet that any earthquake is not the sign of a larger one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreshock
There's at least one[a] town/city called San Jose in at least[b] 4 US states. Not to mention other things named such (e.g. 2 different San Jose creeks in California, neither of which is in the San Jose metro - one in LA and one in Monterey)
[a] there appears to be 2 towns in new mexico called San Jose
[a.2] Illinois amuses me because there's a San Jose and St Joseph both, and both are small.
[b] There appears to be a tiny (pop 15) town called San Jose in Texas, but it's unclear if that's officially incorporated, etc.