The Salt Lake Tribune published an article recently on some trenching activity by the Utah Geologic Survey and the USGS to better date past movements on this active fault.
Failures
Taiwan Earthquake Investigators Arrest Developer of Collapsed Building
Taiwanese investigators have arrested the developer of a 17-story apartment building that collapsed in an earthquake at the beginning of the month. Approximately 40 people were killed when the building collapsed, there were only two […]
Press Releases
Italian Court Action Likely to Harm Efforts to Mitigate Earthquake Losses
On 22 October, 2012, an Italian court convicted six internationally respected scientists of manslaughter. The scientists Enzo Boschi, Giulio Selvaggi, Franco Barberi, Claudio Eva, Mauro Dolce, and Gian Michele Calvi have been sentenced to prison terms, barred from public office, and ordered to pay court costs and damages.
Their offense could have been avoided by precisely predicting the timing and nature of the tragic 2009 earthquake in L’Aquila. However, such precise, short-term earthquake prediction of the type evidently sought by L’Aquila is currently impossible. Because of the ungainly complexity of earthquake systems, knowledge of physical details is incomplete; the diverse expressions of earthquake processes deliver contradictory messages; and measurements of earthquake phenomena can be inaccurate. Glaringly, the indictment accused the scientists of having provided “incomplete”, “contradictory”, and “inaccurate” information.
[Editor] Click through for the rest of the press release from the GSA. [/Editor]
Geologic Hazards
Video: Geotechnical investigation of the March 11, 2011 Tohoku Earthquake, Japan
The NSF funded Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance (GEER) team has provided a preliminary report and some amazing photos and video of the damage to various regions of Japan affected by the moment magnitude 9.0 earthquake that struck on March 11, 2011. Read on to see some amazing photos and video of the liquefaction damage related to the Tohoku Earthquake in Japan. (Photos from Oregon State Flickr)