Saturday, August 11, 2018

Lombok Quake Lifts Island 10 Inches: Death Toll Nearly 400 And Rising



Lombok lifted 10 inches by quake that killed nearly 400



Scientists say the powerful Indonesian earthquake that killed nearly 400 people lifted the island it struck by as much as 25 centimeters (10 inches).
The National Disaster Mitigation Agency said on Saturday that 387 people died, jumping from the 321 it reported the previous day, as search and rescue teams continued to sift through the rubble and people already buried by relatives are accounted for.
Using satellite images of Lombok from the days following the Aug. 5 quake, scientists from NASA and the California Institute of Technology's joint rapid imaging project made a ground deformation map and measured changes in the island's surface.

In the northwest of the island near the epicenter, the rupturing faultline lifted the earth by a quarter of a meter. In other places it dropped by 5-15 centimeters (2-6 inches).
NASA said satellite observations can help authorities respond to earthquakes and other natural or manmade disasters.
Almost 390,000 people, about 10 percent of Lombok's population, are homeless or displaced after the earthquake, which damaged and destroyed about 68,000 homes.
Disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said three districts in the north of Lombok still haven't received any assistance. The governor of West Nusa Tenggara province, which includes Lombok, has extended the official emergency period by two weeks to Aug. 25.
"It's estimated the death toll will continue to grow because there are still victims who are suspected of being buried by landslides and collapsed buildings and there are deaths that have not been recorded," Nugroho said.

The number of evacuees fluctuates, he said, because not all evacuee points have been counted and some people tend to their gardens and properties during the day and return to the tent camps at night. Some people don't need to evacuate because their homes aren't damaged but have come to refugee centers because they feel traumatized.
Nearly a week since the 7.0 quake, Lombok is still reeling but glimmers of normality were returning for some and devout villagers are making plans for temporary replacements of mosques that were flattened.
In Tanjung, one of the worst affected districts in the hard-hit north of the island, a food market opened Saturday and locals bought vegetables and fish. Some shops also opened for business despite being in damaged buildings.








A giant swarm of 153 earthquakes recently hit near the Yellowstone supervolcano, according to the latest data.
The data, taken from the University of Utah Seismograph Station, shows a series of earthquakes happening all around Yellowstone, but none higher than a 2.5 magnitude on the Richter scale. Anything above a 5 is classified as a risk by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
While the recent string of quakes' intensity is not strong enough to pose a danger, they are a reminder that the area experiences frequent seismic activity.
The alert level continues to remain at "normal," indicating the recent swath of earthquakes are not any cause for concern. 
Some have professed that a major earthquake could set off the Yellowstone supervolcano, which last erupted 630,000 years ago.
In October 2017, researchers Hannah Shamloo and Christy Till analyzed minerals in fossilized ash from the most recent eruption. What they discovered surprised them — the changes in temperature and composition only took a few decades, much faster than the centuries previously thought.
At the time, several media outlets suggested that the findings could mean that the supervolcano was going to erupt faster than Shamloo and Till expected, but that is not the case.
"There's no reason to think it could impact mass transport the way the Iceland eruption did nor would it have any effect on crops," Till told Fox News at the time. "There is no evidence to suggest it could destroy mankind."

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