Quakes, aftershocks worry Indonesians
By ANTHONY DEUTSCH
The Associated Press
For those of you unfamiliar with the power of earthquakes and the Richter Scale, here’s the difference in strength: Naturally, it depends on the depth of the earthquake, but if you have a 6.7 earthquake followed by a 6.8, the 6.8 earthquake means the earth released ten times more energy than the 6.7. for each one tenth of a point on the Richter Scale, the earthquake is ten times worse. - JS
PADANG, Indonesia - Days of colossal earthquakes and tsunami warnings have forced traumatized Indonesian villagers to seek safety in the last place imaginable: graveyards.
With only plastic sheeting to keep her family dry, Dasima joined hundreds camping in the mud between headstones on the flat, high ground, far from the ocean’s reach.
“I am very afraid of another tsunami,” the 50-year-old said two days after an 8.4-magnitude temblor sent a towering wave into her remote fishing village. “We will stay here until we feel it is safe.”
Seismologists warn, however, the worst may be yet to come.
Kerry Sieh of the California Institute of Technology has spent decades studying the fault line that runs along Indonesia’s western coast. He is among several experts predicting a repeat of the powerful earthquake that triggered the 2004 Asian tsunami, which killed more than 230,000 people in a dozen Indian Ocean nations.
“No one can say whether it will be in 30 seconds or 30 years,” he said. “But what happened the other day, I think is quite possibly a sequence of smaller earthquakes leading up to the bigger one.”
Wednesday’s quake shook four Southeast Asian countries, damaged hundreds of houses and spawned a 10-foot-high tsunami. At least 13 people were killed. A series of powerful earthquakes and dozens of strong aftershocks followed - including one measuring 7.8 and another 7.1.
read more HERE
