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7.4 earthquake in Taiwan, 34km depth

earthquake.usgs.gov

81–90 of 183 posts

Re: 7.4 earthquake in Taiwan, 34km depth

#82
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.

TSMC still evacuated. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tsmc-evacuates-production-lin...

Re: 7.4 earthquake in Taiwan, 34km depth

#83
The Circle line has dislodged https://www.setn.com/News.aspx?NewsID=1448651

Live stream of news about the incident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SydScnOrmf8

There's been pretty big aftershocks like clockwork after, it's gonna be a hard day. My dog is freaked out, my fish tanks are half empty, we're not sure if we can open the restaurant since the MRT is closed and our chef lives quite far, and that's just life in Taipei, I can't imagine what people in Hualian are going through.

Edit: the aftershock just now was as strong as some of the scarier earthquakes I've ever felt in my life. Such a rough day for Hualien. I envision going down to the southeast to support but it might actually be impossible right now, due to landslides and the train lines going down. Even if I took my motorcycle, I doubt I could get through.

Edit: pov from a car on an elevated road https://twitter.com/jimmy_su/status/1775347726697587167?s=20 most highways in Taiwan are elevated maybe 100m or so.

Edit: hw9 near Hualien lost a bridge https://udn.com/news/story/7314/7874283 that is one of the most beautiful, well maintained, fun, and safest roads I've ever motorcycled in my life. I hope they are able to repair it.

Edit: I'm furious with YouTube for forcing this to be a "short" with bad-on-purpose UX but here's a video of odd water behavior in a port https://youtube.com/shorts/91Rmacvw4ho?si=d78KAUvDTeg_ovbh

Re: 7.4 earthquake in Taiwan, 34km depth

#84
post #42
post #7

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

Follow-up question. I understand how Richter Scale + depth could be useful, academically. But when communicating with the public, wouldn't it be easier to have a single number - rather than requiring the public to understand the relationship between two different quantities? Maybe: surface-equivalent Richter scale? Of course transitioning to a new standard would be even more confusing for a while. Edit: apparently th…

In Japan for domestic quakes they always report the Shindo scale (based on surface peak ground acceleration) instead of Magnitude. It’s way more useful a measure IMHO and whenever I see western news report use M it tells me nothing about how bad the quake actually was.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Meteorological_Agency_se...

Re: 7.4 earthquake in Taiwan, 34km depth

#85
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man in that second video they look so calm standing under a massive potential landslide that could sweep them to their death.

That first one with the leaning building...have they not seen footage from 9/11 or any disaster movie about how far the debris field can travel in an uncontrolled building collapse? That's a definite nope from me.

Most of the pictures are a little misleading for distance etc, as well as time. When people are close to the building is before the fire department arrived, and people are trying to get other people out of the building. It sounds like they're relatively situationally aware, warning eachother about live cables, gas, etc. Obviously there's a risk of death but there's also a risk of your old neighbor getting squashed if you don't get her out, so, I guess it's up to each person how they react.

Within about 20 minutes the fire department had completed its first evaluation of damage and identified the 3 partially collapsed buildings.

Re: 7.4 earthquake in Taiwan, 34km depth

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How many drops is this for you, Lieutenant? Thirty eight... simulated.

https://www.cactushugs.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/aliens...>

(For the uninitiated.)

Re: 7.4 earthquake in Taiwan, 34km depth

#87
post #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.

I’m on the southwestern coast of Ishigaki island (one of the closest to Taiwan), and the effects really seem to have been minimal.

The harbor area here was dead silent for a while, empty streets. But things are back to normal now that the tsunami warning has been lifted.

Re: 7.4 earthquake in Taiwan, 34km depth

#88
post #42
post #7

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

Follow-up question. I understand how Richter Scale + depth could be useful, academically. But when communicating with the public, wouldn't it be easier to have a single number - rather than requiring the public to understand the relationship between two different quantities? Maybe: surface-equivalent Richter scale? Of course transitioning to a new standard would be even more confusing for a while. Edit: apparently th…

This is why the Shindo scale is favoured in Japan, as it addresses the effects on people and buildings in a particular area, so you can tell just by looking at what is shaking and how much to get an idea of the strength. The worst part of experiencing an earthquake, for me, is realising that anything can happen in the next moments, otherwise it's weirdly normal.

Re: 7.4 earthquake in Taiwan, 34km depth

#89

This was felt pretty strongly in Taipei, some reports of electricity outage too. All my friends and I seem ok though.

I’m also in Taipei. It’s the worst one ever I’ve felt in my life. Staying on the 7th floor with noway to escape in time is probably the worst feeling

If it's any consolation, there's not really time to escape a collapsing building from any level, since the bottom floors usually are crushed first and near instantaneously. If you look at pictures from partially collapsed buildings in Hualian you can see that sometimes it's just the bottom floor that's destroyed and the remaining floors are fine for sometimes days or even until the building is manually taken down.

The pictures of collapsed buildings after earthquakes are scary but the chance of an individual building collapsing are quite low, you're at far greater risk if you're outside near buildings because broken glass or similar could fall on you.

The standard advice is good advice for a reason: stay inside, under sturdy furniture, on your elbows and knees, covering your head. You can learn more here: https://sf-fire.org/disaster-preparedness-information-resour...

Re: 7.4 earthquake in Taiwan, 34km depth

#90
post #42
post #7

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

Follow-up question. I understand how Richter Scale + depth could be useful, academically. But when communicating with the public, wouldn't it be easier to have a single number - rather than requiring the public to understand the relationship between two different quantities? Maybe: surface-equivalent Richter scale? Of course transitioning to a new standard would be even more confusing for a while. Edit: apparently th…

Also could take into account distance to the point of interest. So, in city X you have a number and city Y another.
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