MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

AFP – “A series of at least six earthquakes — two reaching at least 5.0- magnitude — struck Sunday in the Mexican state of Guerrero, which is still reeling from deadly tropical storms last month.

The epicenter of the strongest quake — 5.21-magnitude, at 9.27 local time (1527 GMT), according to the National Seismological Service — was located in the mountainous area where a September 16 mudslide buried a whole town.

‘We are monitoring the areas affected by the recent rains because the soil is moist and that can generate problems’ from the trembling, said Jose Luis Serna, civil protection director of the town nearest the epicenter, Coyuca de Benitez.

‘But so far, we have no news,’ he said.

The quakes were also felt with moderate intensity in the resort town of Acapulco, which is recovering from the massive flooding brought on when storms Ingrid and Manuel swept across the country in mid-September.

Authorities recommended moving ‘away from risk areas, such as slopes and where there are cracks in the ground,’ Guerrero governor Angel Aguirre said in his Twitter account.

Tourists in Acapulco were evacuated from hotels to the Costera Miguel Aleman, the port town’s main tourist road.

All six quakes were recorded between 9am local time (1500 GMT) and 10.36am (1636 GMT), and so far no damage has been reported in Guerrero state.” Source – The Borneo Post.

The Nation – “The death toll from two powerful earthquakes that devastated an impoverished region of Balochistan has climbed to 825, National Disaster Management Authority said on Tuesday.

More than 30 villages, containing some 20,000 homes, were flattened across 15,400 square miles of the remote Balochistan region.

Dozens of bodies are being recovered every day from mud homes whose walls and beams have been reduced to dust and rubble.

Conditions are desperate among the survivors and many are going without food, water and shelter, having lost everything in the quake.

So far, no relief camp has been established Mashkay, Gashgor and Malar areas where quack victims waiting for government help under open skies.

Baloch rebel militant group’s attacks on security forces disturbed rescue operation in quake-hit areas of restive province.

According to PDMA, rescue teams will be sent to the affected areas only after security clearance.

The quake is Pakistan s deadliest since the Kashmir tremor of 2005 which killed 73,000. The toll is expected to rise further as rescue teams dig through the rubble of countless flattened mud-brick homes.” Source – The Nation.

Luke 21:10-11, “Then He said to them, ‘Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be great earthquakes in various places, and famines and pestilences; and there will be fearful sights and great signs from heaven …’”

Associated Press – “A major earthquake rocked Pakistan’s southwest Saturday, sending people running into the street in panic just days after another quake in the same region killed 359 people, officials said.

The U.S. Geological Survey said on its website that a 6.8 magnitude quake was felt in Pakistan’s southwestern Baluchistan province.

The Pakistani Meteorological Department measured the earthquake at 7.2 magnitude. The department said its epicenter was located about 90 miles west of the town of Khuzdar.

There were no immediate reports of casualties, said Abdur Rasheed, the deputy commissioner of Awaran district where both quakes were centered.

There may have been little left to damage after Tuesday’s disaster. Few of the mud and homemade brick houses in the area survived the 7.7 magnitude quake that leveled houses and buried people in the rubble across the district of Awaran.

Since then tens of thousands of people have been sleeping under the open sky or tents. Rasheed said they had received reports that some homes damaged but still standing after Tuesday’s quake had collapsed Saturday.

He said they are trying to get information whether people were living in some of the partially damaged homes.

‘Today’s earthquake damaged the already damaged buildings and homes,’ he said.” Read more.

At Least 12 Killed In New Earthquake In Pakistan – “Another major earthquake has hit southwestern Pakistan, in the the same area where a devastating quake killed hundreds of people four days earlier.  Early reports say at least 12 people were killed in Saturday’s quake in the Awaran district of Baluchistan province.” Read more.

The Raw Story – “A powerful magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck off Peru’s southern coast Wednesday, triggering panic across several cities though there were no immediate reports of major damage or injuries, authorities said.

The quake, the largest of about 140 registered seismic events so far this year in Peru, was felt with varying intensity in at least eight departments in the south and midwest.

It hit at 11:42 am (1642 GMT), with its epicenter 46 kilometers (29 miles) south of the town of Acari off the Pacific Ocean at a depth of 46 kilometers, according to the US Geological Survey.

The earthquake did not generate a tsunami, Alberto Bisbal of the Civil Defense Institute told RPP radio.

Preliminary information indicated that some adobe houses in the area may have partially collapsed, he added.

Landslides were reported on the slopes of the Nevado Chachani volcano near the city of Arequipa, and other landslides blocked some roads in towns near the epicenter, the highway patrol said.

In Arequipa and neighboring Moquegua, villagers quickly returned to the streets and secure areas such as parks, according to radio reports.

About 500 kilometers (300 miles) away in the capital Lima, the temblor was especially felt in skyscrapers, causing the evacuation of many people from tall buildings.” Read more.

Luke 21:10-11, “Then He said to them, ‘Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be great earthquakes in various places, and famines and pestilences; and there will be fearful sights and great signs from heaven …’”

IBN Live – “Eighty people were killed and about another 80 injured when a 7.7-magnitude earthquake hit southwestern Pakistan on Tuesday, with officials saying more persons could be buried under the rubble of collapsed homes.

At least 80 people have been killed so far in the quake that struck Awaran district in Balochistan province, according to a spokesperson of Frontier Corps, Balochistan.

About 80 injured people, including women and children, were brought to the Civil Hospital in Khuzdar, a spokesman for the Balochistan government said. Reports of death had been received from Awaran and Turbat districts, he said.

Hundreds of mud-brick houses collapsed or were damaged in Awaran and Khuzdar areas, officials said. Six bodies were found in Awaran bazar and four more in far flung villages of the district, said Deputy Commissioner Abdul Rasheed Baloch. ‘I fear more people are trapped inside collapsed houses,’ he said.

Ghulam Baloch, an administration official from Khuzdar, said, ‘Houses and shops have collapsed and the casualties could increase.’ Houses were also damaged in Pasni and Windar but details were awaited from these areas, Baloch said.

The army despatched 300 soldiers, rescue and medical teams and a helicopter to the worst-hit areas.

Chief Minister Abdul Malik said an emergency had been declared in Awaran, seven to eight hours’ drive from Quetta, the provincial capital. Both US Geological Survey (USGS) and Pakistan’s meteorological office gave the magnitude as 7.7 on the Richter Scale. USGS said five aftershocks measuring between 4.7 and 5.9 were recorded after the quake.

The quake, with its epicentre 69 km from Awaran, struck at 4.29 pm Pakistani time at a depth of 23 kilometres. Tremors were felt in Karachi, Hyderabad, Larkana and other towns and cities of Sindh province. Reports said the quake was also felt as far away as Lahore, Rawalpindi and Islamabad.” Read more.

7.7 Magnitude Quake In Pakistan Just Created A New Island – “A massive, 7.7 magnitude quake struck south-central Pakistan on Tuesday afternoon local time. The USGS warns that there will high casualties and economic losses, requiring international response. Seismologists have also confirmed that the quake raised a new island, about 30-40 feet high, off the coast. The island is about half a mile off the coast of Gwadar, in the Arabian Sea. Already, reports the International Herald Tribune, crowds have gathered to see the mountainous, rocky island. Some are claiming it is 100 feet long.” Read more.

Science Daily – “A magnitude 8.3 earthquake that struck deep beneath the Sea of Okhotsk on May 24, 2013, has left seismologists struggling to explain how it happened. At a depth of about 609 kilometers (378 miles), the intense pressure on the fault should inhibit the kind of rupture that took place.

‘It’s a mystery how these earthquakes happen. How can rock slide against rock so fast while squeezed by the pressure from 610 kilometers of overlying rock?’ said Thorne Lay, professor of Earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Lay is coauthor of a paper, published in the September 20 issue of Science, analyzing the seismic waves from the Sea of Okhotsk earthquake. First author Lingling Ye, a graduate student working with Lay at UC Santa Cruz, led the seismic analysis, which revealed that this was the largest deep earthquake ever recorded, with a seismic moment 30 percent larger than that of the next largest, a 1994 earthquake 637 kilometers beneath Bolivia.

Deep earthquakes occur in the transition zone between the upper mantle and lower mantle, from 400 to 700 kilometers below the surface. They result from stress in a deep subducted slab where one plate of Earth’s crust dives beneath another plate. Such deep earthquakes usually don’t cause enough shaking on the surface to be hazardous, but scientifically they are of great interest.

The energy released by the Sea of Okhotsk earthquake produced vibrations recorded by several thousand seismic stations around the world. Ye, Lay, and their coauthors determined that it released three times as much energy as the 1994 Bolivia earthquake, comparable to a 35 megaton TNT explosion. The rupture area and rupture velocity were also much larger. The rupture extended about 180 kilometers, by far the longest rupture for any deep earthquake recorded, Lay said. It involved shear faulting with a fast rupture velocity of about 4 kilometers per second (about 9,000 miles per hour), more like a conventional earthquake near the surface than other deep earthquakes. The fault slipped as much as 10 meters, with average slip of about 2 meters.” Read more.

By Matthew Brockett, Bloomberg – “New Zealanders ran screaming from buildings in Wellington yesterday as a magnitude 6.5 earthquake blew out windows and caused part of the city’s port to slide into the sea.

The earthquake struck at 5:09 p.m. local time and was centered offshore, 57 kilometers (35 miles) south-southwest of the capital city, at a depth of 14 kilometers, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It was New Zealand’s biggest quake since a magnitude 6.3 killed 185 people in the South Island city of Christchurch two years ago, and the strongest to hit the central region of the country since 1942, GNS Science seismologist John Ristau said.

There is an 8 percent chance of another magnitude 6 event or larger in the next 24 hours, and 20 percent over the next seven days, Ristau said in a telephone interview. ‘A large earthquake can increase stress or decrease stress on neighboring faults, that’s what we’re looking closely at,’ he said.

The powerful shake, which lasted at least 20 seconds, threw goods from store shelves and caused people to run from buildings such as movie theaters, eyewitnesses said. Four people were hospitalized with minor injuries, state broadcaster TVNZ reported. There were no reports of fatalities.

Downtown Wellington was largely deserted today as aftershocks continued to shake the city. Civil Defense advised people to stay at home and many companies and government departments told staff not to come to work. Parts of the CBD remain cordoned off as smashed glass and debris is removed from sidewalks and engineers assess the safety of high-rise office towers…

The earthquake was the latest in a so-called ‘swarm’ of tremors centered in the Cook Strait that separates New Zealand’s North and South Islands. The nation of 4.4 million people sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, a belt of volcanic and quake activity that circles the Pacific Ocean…

Three major earthquakes have rattled Wellington within three days. A magnitude 5.7 event shook office towers and sent workers diving under desks on July 19, while a 5.8 magnitude tremor woke people shortly after 7 a.m. yesterday.

More than 100 aftershocks have been recorded since the magnitude 6.5 quake, some as strong as magnitude 5.2, according to GNS Science’s Geonet website.” Read more.

CBC News – “A strong earthquake that shook an arid, hilly farming area in northwest China sparked landslides and destroyed or damaged thousands of brick-and-mud homes Monday, killing at least 75 people and injuring more than 450, the government said.

The quake near the city of Dingxi in Gansu province toppled brick walls and telephone lines, shattered mud-and-tile-roofed houses and sent cascades of dirt and rock down hillsides that blocked roads and slowed rescue efforts by crews trying to reach remote areas.

Hospitals set up aid stations in parking lots to accommodate large numbers of injured, while hundreds of paramilitary People’s Armed Police fanned out to search for victims in the region of terraced farmland where the quake struck about 1,200 kilometres west of Beijing.

‘I saw the bulb hanging from the ceiling start swinging wildly around. I woke my two friends and we ran into the bathroom to hide,’ said arts student Li Jingui, 21, who was on the fourth floor of a school dormitory in Dingxi when the shaking started.

‘After the strongest tremors were over, we were worried that there would be aftershocks so we packed our stuff and ran out into a large clearing,’ Li said in a telephone interview.

In addition to the 75 confirmed dead, there were 14 people missing and 459 injured, the central government’s China Earthquake Administration said…

The government’s earthquake monitoring centre said the initial quake at 7:45 a.m. (23:45 GMT Sunday) was magnitude-6.6 and subsequent tremors included a magnitude-5.6.

The quake was shallow, which can be more destructive. The centre said it struck about 20 kilometres beneath the surface while the Gansu provincial earthquake administration said it was just six kilometres deep. The U.S. Geological Survey measured the magnitude of the initial quake as 5.9 and the depth at 10 kilometres.

Initial measurements of an earthquake can vary widely, especially if different monitoring equipment is used.

Su Wei, leader of a 120-member rescue team from the paramilitary People’s Armed Police, told state broadcaster CCTV that they were on their way to the epicentre, but progress was being slowed by mud and rock slides blocking the road.” Read more.