MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

Reuters – “The southern California town of Brawley has taken the unusual step of declaring a state of emergency after a swarm of earthquakes rattled nearly 20 mobile homes off their blocks and forced a slaughterhouse to close, the mayor said on Wednesday.

It is uncommon for quake-hardy California cities to declare emergencies due to tremors, but Brawley mayor George Nava said the earthquake swarm is a unique case because it has lasted for days and caused millions of dollars in damage.

The cluster of relatively small quakes, which are caused by water and other fluids moving around in the Earth’s crust, began on Saturday evening and climaxed the next day with a 5.5 temblor, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The tremors were continuing on Wednesday and geologists say there have been hundreds in total.

Nava said leaders in Brawley, a city of 25,000 residents south of the state’s inland Salton Sea and 170 miles (275 km) southeast of Los Angeles, declared a local emergency late on Tuesday. Officials with surrounding Imperial County made a similar declaration on Wednesday.

Nineteen mobile homes were knocked off their blocks and their residents forced out, Nava said. The auditorium at Brawley Union High School has been damaged and closed off, and the National Beef slaughter plant in Brawley has been temporarily shut down due to damage, he said.

Local businesses have suffered millions of dollars in losses from closures and from customers staying away, Nava said. But he could not give an exact account of quake-related losses.” Read more.

By Melanie Eversley, USA TODAY – “The earthquake swarm that has been rocking Southern California since Sunday has been the area’s strongest such swarm in 30 years, the Los Angeles Times is reporting.

Similar swarms in the magnitude-5.0 range occurred in the area in the 1970s and in 1981, seismologist Lucy Jones of the U.S. Geological Survey told the Times. The area, in the region of Imperial County, is known as the Brawley Seismic Zone and sits between the San Andreas and Imperial faults, Jones told the Times.

No deaths or injures have been reported in the swarm, detailed in On Deadline on Sunday.

The Times reported that some buildings were damaged by the quakes, including 20 mobile homes that shifted from foundations, according to the Imperial County Office of Emergency Services. The American Red Cross is working with the agency to set up temporary shelter for those displaced, the Times reports.

The quakes also caused scattered power outages, including at Pioneers Memorial Hospital, where emergency generators kicked in during the three-hour power loss, the Times reported.” Source – USA Today.

AFP – “A series of earthquakes measuring up to 5.4 rattled southern California, Arizona and the Mexican border region Sunday, seismologists said, although no damage or injuries were immediately reported.

The small- and medium-level quakes were felt from San Diego and Orange County in California east into Arizona, and swamped the temblor-measuring resources of the US Geological Survey (USGS).

The quakes began around 12:16 pm (2016 GMT) with a magnitude 4 temblor 16 miles (26 km) north of El Centro, California, and lasted more than two hours. The biggest shakes included a magnitude 5.4 at 13:57, with the same epicenter.

The so-called ‘seismic swarm’ is a relatively rare occurrence.

‘We haven’t seen one of these since the 1970s, and there was another one back in the 1930s,’ said USGS seismologist Lucy Jones.

‘Our system is choking on so many earthquakes.’

Buildings were evacuated in Brawley, 115 miles east-northeast of San Diego. ‘It’s pretty bad, we had to evacuate the hotel just for safety,’ said Rowena Rapoza, office manager at the Best Western Hotel there.” Source – Yahoo! News.

“An earthquake occurred late this afternoon in the Sea of Okhotsk but poses no threat of a tsunami in Hawaii, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said.

The quake, 7.7 on the Richter scale, occurred at 5 p.m. about 102 miles east of Poronaysk in Sakhalin Island, the center said. Earlier reports has the magnitude at 7.3.

The quake occurred about 350 miles below the surface of the ocean, the center said. It was west of the Kuril Islands that stretch from Hokkaido, Japan, to Kamchatka, Russia.” Source – Star Advertiser.

“DUBAI (Reuters) – Two strong earthquakes killed 180 people and injured about 1,500 in northwest Iran where rescuers frantically combed the rubble of dozens of villages through the night into Sunday.

Thousands fled their homes and remained outdoors after Saturday’s quakes, as at least 40 aftershocks hit the area.

Casualty figures could rise, Iranian officials said, as some of the injured were in a critical condition while other people were still trapped under the rubble and rescuers – hampered by the darkness – had yet to reach some affected villages.

Six villages had been destroyed and about 60 had sustained more than 50 percent damage, Iranian media said.

Photographs posted by Iranian news websites showed bodies lying on the floor in the corner of a white-tiled morgue in the town of Ahar, and medical staff, surrounded by anxious residents, treating the injured in the open air as dusk fell.

Other images showed collapsed buildings and cars flattened by rubble…

The U.S. Geological Survey measured Saturday’s first quake at 6.4 magnitude and said it struck 60 km (37 miles) northeast of the city of Tabriz at a depth of 9.9 km (6.2 miles). A second quake measuring 6.3 struck 49 km (30 miles) northeast of Tabriz 11 minutes later at a similar depth…

The second quake struck near the town of Varzaghan. ‘The quake was so intense that people poured into the streets through fear,’ Fars said…

‘Unfortunately there are still a number of people trapped in the rubble but finding them is very difficult because of the darkness,’ national emergency head Gholam Reza Masoumi was quoted as saying by Fars.” Read more.

“THE biggest earthquake for more than a century has hit Victoria tonight with millions feeling it when it struck just before 9pm (AEST), lasting up to 20 seconds in some areas.

Reports started coming in from residents in suburban Melbourne, and then spread to the northeast and southeast of the state.

Windows were rattled, floors rocked and roofs shaken as the quake struck at 8.53pm.

The Geoscience Australia website was in meltdown as people flocked online to find out what occurred and Twitter went wild and when Geoscience was able to restore its site it had the news that the quake that rocked Victoria was the biggest in the state for 109 years.

A spokeswoman for Geoscience said its recordings showed it was a magnitude 5.3 earthquake, which was more accurate than international seismologist estimates.

Geoscience identified the epicentre 16km southwest of Moe, at the Latrobe Valley in Victoria’s east.

‘Our preliminary information is that it’s a 5.3,’ she said.

The US Geological Survey reported the earthquake was almost 10km deep with an epicentre between Trafalgar and Moe in the southeast.

The USGS registered it as a 5.2 quake, but Geoscience Australia clocked it at 5.3, down from an initial 5.5 reading.

The SES said it had more than 30 calls for help.” Read more.

Associated Press – “MIRANDOLA, Italy – A magnitude 5.8 earthquake struck northern Italy on Tuesday, killing at least 15 people as factories, warehouses and a church collapsed in the same region still struggling to recover from another deadly tremor nine days ago.

In a hastily called news conference, Premier Mario Monti pledged the government will do `’all that it must and all that is possible in the briefest period to guarantee the resumption of normal life in this area that is so special, so important and so productive for Italy.”

The region around Bologna is among the country’s most productive. Italy is in the midst of another recession and struggling to tame its massive debt as the European debt crisis worsens.

The quake hit just after 9:00 a.m. local time (0700 GMT) and was centered 40 kilometers (25 miles) northwest of the city of Bologna, according to the U.S. Geological Survey — the same area where a 6.0-magnitude temblor killed seven people on May 20.

The quake was felt from Piedmont in northwestern Italy to Venice in the northeast and as far north as Austria. It was followed by many aftershocks, some registering more than 5.0 in magnitude.” Read more.

By Barbie Nadeau, For CNN – “Rome (CNN) — Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti is heading home early from the NATO summit in Chicago after a strong earthquake struck near Bologna overnight, his government announced Sunday.

At least seven people died, 50 were hurt and a large number displaced by the magnitude 6.0 quake that struck northern Italy early Sunday. In a statement released earlier, Monti pledged ‘All that is necessary will be done as soon as possible’ to help the survivors.

The prime minister is scheduled to leave the summit Sunday evening Chicago time and would be back in Italy on Monday, government spokesman Carmelo Dragotta said. In a statement carried by the news agency ANSA, Monti said his foreign and defense ministers would remain at the summit.

The quake struck about 4 a.m. Sunday (10 p.m. Saturday ET) and was centered about 4 kilometers (2.4 miles) outside Camposanto, northwest of Bologna, the U.S. Geological Survey reported. In addition to the deaths and injuries, a large but unknown number of people — believed to be in the thousands — have been displaced, said Elisabetta Maffani, a spokeswoman for the civil protection agency.

The fatalities included two people killed in a ceramics factory in Sant’Agostino di Ferrara, about 30 km from the epicenter, Maffani said. Another person died when a work shed collapsed in nearby Ponte Rodoni di Bondeno.” Read more.

Croatian Times – “A leading earthquake scientist has warned that the planet could be cracking up after a series of massive quakes in just 48 hours.

Expert Gheorghe Marmureanu – from Romania’s National Institute of Earth Physics – says 39 quakes had hit the globe within two days.

The series started with two massive quakes in Indonesia measuring 8.6 and 8.2 on the Richter scale rapidly followed by three more only slightly smaller in Mexico within hours.

‘There is no doubt that something is seriously wrong. There have been too many strong earthquakes,’ said Marmureanu.

He added: ‘The quakes are a surprise that cannot be easily explained by current scientific knowledge. With the Indonesian quake for example, statistically, there should be one big earthquake in this part of Asia every 500 years. However, since 2004, there were already three quakes with a magnitude of over 8, which is not normal.” Source – Croatian Times.

AP – “SANTIAGO, Chile – A strong magnitude-6.7 earthquake shook central Chile late Monday, prompting authorities to order the evacuation of a stretch of coastline and causing hundreds of people in the capital to flee buildings in panic.

There were no reports of major damage, but authorities in the port city of Valparaiso said a 72-year-old man died of a heart attack during the quake. The earthquake was felt for almost a minute in Valparaiso and the capital, Santiago.

The U.S. Geological Survey initially put the quake’s magnitude at 6.5 but later raised it to 6.7. Its epicenter was 26 miles northeast of Valparaiso, and it had a depth of 23 miles. It struck just minutes before midnight local time Monday.

The Chilean navy’s hydrographic and oceanographic service discounted the possibility of a tsunami, but authorities maintained an order for people to move to higher ground along a roughly 500-mile stretch of coastline running from the city of Constitucion to Tongoy, north of the capital. Thousands of people were later allowed to return home, said Deputy Interior Secretary Rodrigo Ubilla.” Read more.