Mexican Capital Shooked by 7.2 Magnitude Earthquake

People who were participating in a Holy Week procession stop and pray after a strong earthquake jolted Mexico City, Friday, April 18, 2014. A powerful magnitude-7.2 earthquake shook central and southern Mexico but there were no early reports of major damage or casualties.

Officials say captain fled the boat when hundreds of passengers were asked to wait to be rescued.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake at about 9:30 a.m. (10:30 a.m. EDT; 1430 GMT) was centered on a long-dormant fault line northwest of the Pacific resort of Acapulco, where many Mexicans are vacationing for the Easter holiday.
It was felt across at least a half-dozen states and Mexico’s capital, where it collapsed several walls and left large cracks in some facades. Debris covered sidewalks around the city.
Around the region, there were reports of isolated and minor damage, such as fallen fences, trees and broken windows. Chilpancingo, capital of the southern state of Guerrero, where the quake was centered, reported a power outage, but service was restored after 15 minutes.
In Acapulco, 59-year-old Enedina Ramirez Perez was having breakfast, enjoying the holiday with about 20 family members, when her hotel started to shake.
“People were turning over chairs in their desperation to get out, grabbing children, trampling people,” the Mexico City woman said. “The hotel security was excellent and started calming people down. They got everyone to leave quietly.”
The quake struck 170 miles (273 kilometers) southwest of Mexico City, where people fled high-rises and took to the streets, many in still in their bathrobes and pajamas on their day off.
“I started to hear the walls creak and I said, ‘Let’s go,’” said Rodolfo Duarte, 32, who fled his third-floor apartment.
Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera said there were small power outages from fallen transformers but officials were working to restore the service.
The USGS initially calculated the quake’s magnitude at 7.5, but later downgraded it to 7.2. It said the quake was centered 22 miles (36 kilometers) northwest of the town of Tecpan de Galeana, and was 15 miles (24 kilometers) deep.
Friday’s quake occurred along a section of the Pacific Coast known as the Guerrero Seismic Gap, a 125-mile (200-kilometer) section where tectonic plates meet and have been locked, meaning huge amounts of energy are being stored up with potentially devastating effects, said USGS seismologist Gavin Hayes.
The last large quake that occurred along the section was a magnitude-7.6 temblor in 1911, Hayes said.
He said scientists will be watching the area more intensely because moderate quakes such as Friday’s can destabilize the surrounding sections of seismic plate and increase the chance of a more powerful temblor.
The USGS says the Guerrero Gap has the potential to produce a quake as strong as magnitude 8.4, potentially much more powerful than the magnitude-8.1 quake that killed 9,500 people and devastated large sections of Mexico City in 1985. The 1985 quake was centered 250 miles (400 kilometers) from the capital on the Pacific Coast.
Mexico City itself is vulnerable even to distant earthquakes because much of it sits atop the muddy sediments of drained lake beds that quiver as quake waves hit.
Miriam Matz, 45, gathered her suitcases and her teenage daughter to temporarily move out the apartment in the Morelos housing towers in downtown Mexico City where she has lived for five years, after brickwork and concrete slabs fell off the side of the 15-story tower, and long snaking cracks appeared on some walls during Friday’s earthquake.
The sidewalk in front of the building was littered with bits of brick, glass and smashed concrete, and the area was roped off with yellow police tape.
Authorities have not forced residents to evacuate, but Matz said she would leave for safety’s sake.
“We are going to spend a night or two at my sister’s house, in case there are any aftershocks,” she said.

Read More : http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/earthquake-shakes-mexican-capital/2014/04/18/a3ca3a5e-c706-11e3-b708-471bae3cb10c_story.html

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12 Dead in Historic Tradegy on Mount Everest

A team descends through the "popcorn" in the Khumbu Icefall.

PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDY BARDON, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

The worst accident in the history of Everest mountaineering occurred this morning at approximately 6:30 (Nepal time) on the south side of the world's highest peak. Twelve Sherpas are reported dead, with at least three missing and several injured. The Sherpas were killed in the notorious Khumbu Icefall by an avalanche that fell from the hanging glaciers along the West Shoulder.

According to eyewitness accounts, the avalanche swept across the Khumbu Icefall at about 19,000 feet (5,800 meters), in an area called the "popcorn field," so named for the huge blocks of ice spraying across the snow. The Sherpas were ferrying loads for the client climbers when the accident occurred. (Read "Mount Everest's Deadliest Day Puts Focus on Sherpas" in National Geographic magazine.)

 
Ang Kaji Sherpa was one of 12 climbing guides killed Friday in an avalanche on Mount Everest. He was working with a team of elite Sherpa, who were setting up ropes to prepare the way for their clients to follow in the days to come. In 2012 he served as a guide for of the National Geographic/The North Face expedition to Everest and was the first member of that team to reach the summit.

Every year, over 300 climbers attempt Everest by the standard Southeast Ridge route pioneered by Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in 1953. For every one climber, typically a client who has paid up to $50,000 to attempt Everest, there are at least two Sherpas carrying loads.

The Khumbu Icefall, stretching from 18,000 to 19,000 feet (5,500 to 5,800 meters), lies just above base camp on the Nepal side of 29,035-foot (8,850-meter) Mount Everest. Anyone who wants to climb Everest from the south side (the standard route up the north side, in China, is via the North Col route) must pass through the Khumbu Icefall.

Because the Khumbu is so dangerous, guides try to reduce the number of trips through this gauntlet for paying clients, which increases the number of times a working Sherpa, portaging tents, food, ropes, and most important, oxygen for the climbers, must pass through this danger zone.

Whereas a paying climber may pass through the Khumbu only six to eight times while climbing Everest—going up and down for acclimatization—a Sherpa can easily make the mortal trek 30-40 times in a season.

Friday's avalanche happened at 19,000 feet (5,800 meters) in an area known as the "popcorn field."

NG STAFF. SOURCE: GERMAN AEROSPACE CENTER

"It's such a horrific tragedy," said Conrad Anker, world-renowned mountaineer and the leader of the North Face/National Geographic expedition that climbed Everest via the Southeast Ridge in 2012.

"Most Dangerous Place in the World"

"It was just a matter of time," explains Anker. "The Khumbu is probably the most dangerous single place in the climbing world. You can just sit at base camp during the day and watch avalanches roar down right over the climbing route. It scares everyone."

Crossing through the Khumbu is usually done at night via headlamp, between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. This is when the ice blocks and the hanging glaciers are most stable and avalanches least likely. During the day, as the sun warms the mountain, the hanging glaciers begin to avalanche, and the ice in the Khumbu starts to crumble.

"Sherpas bear the real burden of climbing Mount Everest," states Anker. "They're the ones who take the biggest risks."

One of the dead is Ang Kaji Sherpa, who was one of the strongest Sherpas on the 2012 North Face/National Geographic Everest expedition. Kaji, father of six, was a veteran of over half a dozen expeditions to Everest. In 2012, he was the first person to summit Everest that spring and put up the climbing ropes for all the subsequent climbers. When he came down from that summit bid in 2012, he was greeted with enormous applause, but humble and smiling, he simply said he “wasn’t that tired.” Later in the expedition, when the Nat Geo team members first arrived in the Death Zone at 26,000 feet (7,900 meters), Kaji ran around hand-delivering hot bowls of steaming soup.

A climber steps across a bridge of aluminum ladders lashed together above a crevasse in the Khumbu Icefall.

PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDY BARDON, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

The Sherpas, an ethnic group of 80,000 in Nepal that moved south from the Tibetan plateau some 300 years ago, have been used as labor on mountaineering expeditions since the very beginning. Genetically adapted to high altitude, Sherpas are stronger, faster, and naturally fitter above 23,000 feet (7,000 meters), where most Western climbers begin using bottled oxygen. Sherpas have also been dying on Everest from the very beginning—on the first serious attempt of Everest, in 1922, seven Sherpas died in an avalanche.

Although statistically a client climber is more likely to die attempting the summit on Everest, a Sherpa is more likely to die in the Khumbu Icefall.

"It's essentially a game of Russian roulette," says Anker. "There is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide."

Passage through the Khumbu Icefall is so notoriously dangerous that sometimes guides simply stop their expedition if the icefall is deemed too dangerous. In the spring of 2012, Russell Brice, owner and operator of Himalayan Experience, the largest and most successful Everest guiding operation in the world, halted his expedition because he felt the Khumbu and the avalanches were simply too dangerous, particularly for his Sherpas. (Read "Maxed Out on Everest" in National Geographic magazine.)
Currently, the mountain is shut down for rescue operations. The confirmed dead are Dorjee Sherpa, Ang Chiring Sherpa, Mingma Sherpa, Ningma Sherpa, Ang Kaji Sherpa, Pasang Karma Sherpa, Lakpa Tenzing Sherpa, Chiring Wankchu Sherpa, Wangele Sherpa, Khem Dorjee Sherpa, Furwa Temba Sherpa, and Aasamn Tamang Sherpa. Their bodies are being removed from the mountain.

Read More : http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/04/140418-everest-avalanche-sherpa-killed-mountain/

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Chile earthquake: 6 dead, almost a million evacuated

SANTIAGO, Chile

  Hundreds of thousands of people evacuated from Chile's low-lying coastal areas returned home Wednesday morning after authorities called off a tsunami alarm as damage from a massive overnight earthquake seemed mostly limited.

The major earthquake, with a magnitude 8.2, struck off the coast of northern Chile on Tuesday, killing six and triggering a tsunami that pounded the shore with 7-foot waves.

Officials said the dead included people--a firefighter among them--who were crushed by collapsing walls or were killed by heart attacks.
Angamos, a key copper exporting port in northern Mejillones, escaped major damage, but workers were evacuated as a precaution, port union leader Enrique Solar told Reuters.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake was shallow at 12.5 miles below the seabed and struck about 950 miles from the capital, Santiago. The most heavily affected area appeared to be the mining port of Iquique near the Peruvian border.
The country's president, Michelle Bachelet, declared parts of Chile's north a disaster zone, promising troops and police reinforcements to maintain order while damage was repaired after landslides blocked roads.Authorities were evaluating the full extent of damage.
Bachelet was scheduled to visit the affected areas later Wednesday.
Over 900,000 people were evacuated from the coastline along Chile. Many still have fresh memories of a deadly February 2010 quake and tsunami that struck the country's central-southern regions fresh in its memory.
An unusually large number of tremors that preceded Tuesday's quake unnerved residents, who emptied beaches, rushed to buy emergency rations, and prepared for an eventual evacuation.
"The government of Chile has been working hard to improve the awareness of people living along the coast to the threat from tsunamis and on what to do if one is approaching," said Steven Godby, an expert in disaster management at Nottingham Trent University in Nottingham, England.

"Several tsunami drills have taken place since the (earthquake and) tsunami that killed an estimated 500 plus Chileans in February 2010, and recent earthquakes in the region have helped to keep the threat firmly in people's minds," he added.
High alertIquique is a key port, close to Chile's main copper mines. The area has been on high alert in recent weeks after an unusual number of tremors, and a series of aftershocks further frayed nerves in the early hours Wednesday.
Seismic Chile has strict tremor-proof construction regulations and most residents stay calm during quakes, which helps to limit harm.
State-owned miner Codelco and other major copper companies reported no harm to workers or mines and said operations in northern Chile were normal. Still, the massive Collahuasi mine evacuated workers so they could be with their families.
History of quakes
Much of Chile's coast borders the oceanic Nazca tectonic plate, which is being pushed under the continental South American plate, creating a geologic hot spot responsible for the creation of the Andes mountains.
That pressure can produce earthquakes greater than magnitude 9, the same class of temblor that caused the 2004 Sumatra and 2011 Japan tsunamis.
Southern Chile produced the most powerful earthquake on record, a magnitude 9.5 temblor in 1960 which killed thousands around the city of Valdivia and brought tsunamis to Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines and the U.S. West Coast. A magnitude 8.8 earthquake in southern Chile killed 524 people and destroyed 220,000 homes in 2010.
Swarms of earthquakes off the northern coast, including a magnitude 6.7 shaker that struck March 16, preceded Tuesday's temblor.
But one earthquake expert who has studied the area warned Tuesday that the quake was unlikely to have relieved the enormous pressures that have built up along the massive fault, which he said had not broken in that area since 1877.
"It's probably not big enough to have released all of the energy that had been stored up along that locked plate boundary for the last 140 years or so," said Rick Allmendinger, a Cornell University professor of Earth and atmospheric sciences. "Is this the big one for that area? Or was it a foreshock to a presumably even bigger earthquake?"

Read More : http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-chile-earthquake-20140402,0,5625672.story

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