Magnitude 7.1 QUAKE - OFFSHORE HONDURAS

[~~Anita~~]

Wow, next trip to Belize.....it's "Monkey River Town or Bust".

I've got to get there before it's gone!!!

[Zelda]

I wish Barn (Bill) would check in, Would like to hear how his Place held up.

yeah, me too, especially after reading this:

The quake’s most damaging effects were concentrated between Placencia and Monkey River, and was felt strongly throughout Belize, from north to south, but most powerfully between the southern border and Central Belize.

http://www.7newsbelize.com/sstory.php?nid=14084

so, I went to Barn's blog, and there's photos and the usual VIVID Barn-descriptions:

everything, and i mean everything fell off our shelves. lots of busted crap around.
our little Mennonite house on sticks was a rockin and rollin!

http://barnaclesbelize.blogspot.com/

glad to hear they're okay, sorry to read they've got a mega-mess to clean up.

[Zelda]

some damage pix from Placencia, by Fiona MacFarlane:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fionamacfarlane/

[barnacle]

hey,, checkin in,,

IT WAS ONE HELLOFA RIDE!! at 0230 we were of course in bed sound asleep when the house started shaking. then the power went off. pitch black.
i'm still in dreamland, shit crashing all over and glass breaking, can't see a thing.
it kept up for around 30 seconds i think. then we found our flashlights and some clothes and got out.
after calming down, adriane went to bed,, in a rental cuz they are not raised as hi as ours.
i couldn't sleep, wound up and with no power it's freekin hot!
so i go for a drive to see if i can see any power poles down or something,, plus the truck has AC!
since then there has been around 5 after-rumbles that give us the willies!
all our 'stuff' is fine as is what seems to be all of Maya Beach altho i have not been to mango's yet to get all the 'straight poop'.
placencia has some problems,, water tower is cracked or something, cracks in the ground all over, the docks are all jacked up, and some houses fell over/down.
all the booze fell off the shelves at the everyday market and the other stores also had messes.
just like i have seen on t.v.

i am new to this whole earthquake shit and i was impressed! what made it so much more weird, scary, whatever, was being in the dark!! and 1/2 assleep trying to figure out what the hells going on?

[DriveGoddess]

Wow.....glad to hear y'all are okay....pity about the booze getting damaged eh?

[~~Anita~~]

Hey Zelda, thanks for the photo site.

Barn.....sorry to hear about your rude awakening, but glad to hear you are all OK.

[Zelda]

oh, thanks for checking in, Barn !!

good to hear from you, and yeah, it's a pain in the butt to clean up afterwards.

we're thinking about installing some wood strips across the shelves, near the bottom, as sort of a retainer.

regarding the duration, mom taught me to count, so it kicks in automatically, like when counting between lightning and thunder, to see how close the strike is),

having been through dozens of quakes (but NEVER one this big!!), I was already awake, since my animals were disturbed before the quake hit... so I started the count RIGHT at the beginning... (one-ten-thousand, two-ten-thousand...) and here in Succotz, the shaking lasted nearly a minute.

I think it has to do with different soil compositions, I forget the tech stuff involved.

surprised to hear Marge and Tom didn't feel it at ALL, and I've talked to several people who slept through it.

not US, wheeeeeeeeeeeee !!!

[collyk]

Well we slept through it. A few people in San Pedro said they felt something, but we did get one major new attraction. A new cenote! A big one. Check it out.

Our new cenote

[catdance62]

wow that cenote is a trip!

[DriveGoddess]

makes one really wonder about where they should build their homes

[Miss Kenni]

Whereabouts is "north of Ambergris Caye," other than in the ocean? Or did they mean north of San Pedro? Kenni

[Moonracer]

We did feel the 2:24am quake, just not the one that happened 8 hours before. We woke up to the shaking bed, checked the time (my watch is slow and said 2:22), then got up and stood in the doorway listening to the dishes rattle. When it stopped we went on the porch to see what we could see, which was, of course, nothing since it was pitch black and no moon that night.

Weird thing was that as two East Coast gringos, we still both immediately knew what it was. We just didn't realize how big it was until we talked to some transplanted S. Californians who said "that was a big one."

[Zelda]

Colette, that sinkhole is very interesting!

Marge, sorry I misunderstood your post...

here's some more on quakes:

Earthquakes: A Way of Life for Belize

posted (May 29, 2009)

The reason those coastal communities got hardest hit is because they are directly in line with what’s called the Motagua Fault, the boundary of the North American and Caribbean tectonic plates. It may sound technical, but you need to know because that plate boundary cuts right between Honduras and Belize and it’s friction along that fault that caused Thursday’s quake.

Andre Cho, Geologist: “Belize lies on the North American Tectonic Plate, Central America and the Caribbean Plate and there is a transformed plate boundary down there that is sliding, the two plates are sliding cross each other and so it cause faults in the rocks and as the rocks are sliding each other, friction holds them together and so energy is being built up in there and when the energy overcomes the friction it breaks the rocks and causes the energy to be released in the form of an earthquake. So once that energy has been released the major earthquake has passed and then like I said you will normally experience some tremors for some time after. Another earthquake won’t occur again until that same scenario where it is built up again and then violently released.”

http://www.7newsbelize.com/sstory.php?nid=14098

[Zelda]

More Tremors Shake Belize

posted (May 29, 2009)

Did you feel a tremor around 8:45 last night? Or maybe those in the south felt one at 6:45 this morning. If you felt either of them, it wasn’t your imagination, nor was it post-traumatic stress; those were real, both aftershocks of Thursday morning’s powerful 7.1 magnitude earthquake. The epicenter of the major quake was about 140 miles east of the Stann Creek Coast and caused major structural damage in the villages of Monkey River, Independence and Placencia. As we showed you last night, that structural damage was quite remarkable in Monkey River where many wooden houses on stilts simply sunk into the ground – some sunk as much as eight to ten feet. As we told you last night, that’s called earthquake liquefaction and today geologist Andre Cho explained what causes the strange phenomenon.

Andre Cho, Geologist: “What happens in an earthquake whenever the seismic waves pass through sediment, loose sediments, it is a natural phenomenon for the sediment to become like a liquid just for a short period of time, just a couple seconds, and that is what is known as liquefaction and that is what causes buildings to sink like what happened in Monkey River. It is on coastal alluvium or sediments which is unconsolidated. So places like Monkey River and Belize City as well, because it is on the coast and it lies on top of unconsolidated sediments or coastal sediments, those places are very vulnerable to liquefaction.”

http://www.7newsbelize.com/sstory.php?nid=14097

mom explained alluvial soils and liquefaction to us kids thusly:

"It's like Santa Claus's belly, shakes when he laughs, like a bowlful of jelly!"

that's what happened in the Marina District in SF, during the Loma Prieta Quake of '89.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Loma_ ... earthquake

[collyk]

LOL Miss Kenni. Actually there is huge controversy about what is actually north Ambergris Caye. The cenote is about 2 miles north of the cut, but while many that live in the area and many real estate agents would refer to it as north Ambergris Caye, the truth is that there is nearly 20 miles of Ambergris Caye, north of the cut, so you have to get a long way north before you truly are in north Ambergris Caye. People forget how big the caye actually is and that most of it is totally wild and uninhabited. 26 miles long is our lovely caye. The new cenote is definitely a fine addition to the amazing things we already have to offer out here and may cause some to rethink the mining with explosives permits that have recently been given out in that very area.