when is the next big one?

Ronald Altieri - January 31 2011, 12:09 PM

WHEN IS THE NEXT BIG ONE?

The next big one is not about the CEP Report on February 2nd, or February 7th or this and that, but the next big one is about a forecast of another earthquake anyday or in 40 or 100 years.

No! I am not a pessimist or an alarmist, but just like everyone else I like to keep an umbrella in case of rain. Let us get our minds straight and see the faults in us in order to solve that which con only be solved spiritually.

Check this out!
Paul Mann is a Geologist from the University of Texas at Austin's Jackson School of Geosciences has explained in more detail how he and his colleagues back in 2008 forecasted that Haiti was going to suffer a severe earthquake in the near term.
He said (copied and pasted):
"In our Haiti studies, we estimated the size of the future event (7.2 magnitude on the Ritchter scale) based on the time we inferred since the fault was last active [the last major earthquake was in 1751], the rate of slip along the fault as determined from GPS measurements in Haiti published by D. M. Manaker et al. (2008) (7 mm/yr), and the location of the rupture (the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault zone (EPGFZ), a strike-slip fault we have studied from geologic mapping).

"
Paul had presented his studies as a warning or a forecast and not a prediction to geologists and policy makers at the 2008 Caribbean Conference.

The research that Mann and his colleagues have done in the region suggests that the next big earthquake could be along the Septentrional fault zone of the northern Dominican Republic.

"This second, northern strand of the Carib-Noam plate boundary has a faster rate than the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault zone and therefore accumulates strain at a faster rate," says Mann. According to their calculations, although there hasn't been a major quake for 800 years along the fault, they forecast that a 7.5 magnitude earthquake is likely sometime in the future.

"We have no idea when this fault might rupture: tomorrow or 100 yrs from now," Mann says, "but recent events show the importance of this type of research, and retrofitting older buildings in order to avoid a repetition of the Haiti disaster along that part of the plate boundary."
And I say - Well! Just in case you were caught in your emotions, as I was, well - Dr. Roger Munson has a more focus belief on the whole issue.

He is a seismologist at the British Geological Survey, and he believes that there's a strong possibility that there will be another substantial earthquake in the western part of Haiti in the next 40 years or so, and it could also produce some earthquakes in Jamaica over the next 100 years."
Dr. Eric Calais.

A geophysicist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana says that Haiti's political situation had made it a difficult place to do science.

He uses GPS stations to monitor the area since 2003 and sees little possibility to do research because of security reasons based on the political situation.

As we all get caught in the OAS, US, Jean-Claude, Jean-Bertrand and this and that

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