Live data from Hacker News

7.4 earthquake in Taiwan, 34km depth

earthquake.usgs.gov

71–80 of 183 posts

Re: 7.4 earthquake in Taiwan, 34km depth

#72
post #21
post #7

I see earthquake reports (like this one) describe earthquake depth. What is the significance of it? Is it somehow actionable?

A shallow 6 is very different from a deeper 7. My city Christchurch was fucked by a 6.2 or 6.3 - but it was both (a) shallow (5km) and (b) close to dense residential areas. Christchurch was near to the 7.1 Canterbury earthquake but that did much less damage as it was 10km deep and Christchurch wasn't on top of it (it mostly affected less dense rural properties in the region near Christchurch). Be careful not to think…

There's actually some interesting visuals that illustrate this showing the difference in ground velocity between the two earthquakes :

2010 Quake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA5m5PZ5p8E

2011 Quake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJW7tkTwqXo

And a good explanation vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaA1nxYVi6k

Re: 7.4 earthquake in Taiwan, 34km depth

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As somebody who has been through more than 10 thousand quakes, it's as significant as the force itself. 7.4 @ 300km deep you just yawn and roll over. @10km deep you pray your concrete roof tiles don't come through the ceiling and kill you in your bed... you basically just lie on top of your wife, give thanks for the time you did have, and hope for the best.

> As somebody who has been through more than 10 thousand quakes What's this now?

Christchurch quake had 10's of thousands of aftershocks. A few people I know were rattled to the point they were shell shocked and just had to leave town - every tremor triggering off "could this be it" all over again.

Re: 7.4 earthquake in Taiwan, 34km depth

#74
post #8

Are fabs knocked offline?

TSMC is extremely prepared for earthquakes. The YouTuber Asionmetery has a good video on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNKF21B01NQ Its incredible what they do in terms of accuracy in a place with so much seismic activity.

From what I understand (I used to live in the main city for that), even the vibration from local trains are a factor

Re: 7.4 earthquake in Taiwan, 34km depth

#75
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a stream of the big dampening device in Taipei 101? I cannot find it via usual searches but wonder if it is available in another language search.

It happened too early 8:03 AM. Probably no visitor or even staff in Taipei 101. Last time videos are all from visitor.

That’s too bad. They should live stream it so they can allow performance after earthquakes, a testament to successful engineering.

Re: 7.4 earthquake in Taiwan, 34km depth

#76
post #2

Japan’s meteorological agency forecast a tsunami of up to 3 meters (9.8 feet) for those curious https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/02/taiwan-earth...

The tsunami reports I've heard here on the north coast are that it ended up being less than 1 metre tall, so luckily nothing to worry about.

Re: 7.4 earthquake in Taiwan, 34km depth

#77
post #3

As of 40 minutes after the event, someone has already created a Wikipedia article about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Taiwan_earthquake

While it's cool that Wikipedia could be used for breaking news, "Recentism"[0] is generally not seen favorably on Wikipedia [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Recentism

Wikipedia itself isn't ideal for this, but I keep waiting for some major news institution to migrate away from the ancient newspaper article format and towards something more wiki-like for covering stories.

I think you could productively fit any kind of news coverage into a wiki article plus a stream of recent updates.

Re: 7.4 earthquake in Taiwan, 34km depth

#78
post #19
post #2

Japan’s meteorological agency forecast a tsunami of up to 3 meters (9.8 feet) for those curious https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/02/taiwan-earth...

3 m sound not too bad?

This comment author was not correct, but this question prompted a lot of great answers and improved the quality of the discussion. Per HN rules, this comment should be upvoted, not downvoted.

Re: 7.4 earthquake in Taiwan, 34km depth

#79
TSMC evacuated their facilities, hopefully there is no damage there and no serious injuries or deaths across the country. Taiwan has said there are a number of Chinese warships that have entered their waters as well, supposedly willing to lend aid...though not sure if that's a good deal to take.
Post reply on HN