Earthquake tremor in St. Maarten last night

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msbee
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Earthquake tremor in St. Maarten last night

#1 Postby msbee » Sun Nov 23, 2003 6:49 pm

FYI
Last night we felt an earthquake in St Maarten at about 10:51 PM.
We heard this loud rumbling coming in our direction. Then our whole house shook. Then the rumbling passed us and continued off in the other direction.

Here are the statistics on this earthquake as reported by the University of the West Indies Seismic Research Unit.

On Saturday evening 22 November at 10:51p.m. an earthquake occurred about 70 km east of St. Martin. The preliminary location for the event is 17.99°N 62.35°W. The event was reported felt in St. St. Martin.

The focal depth was approximately 17km. The magnitude was 3.4.






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#2 Postby cycloneye » Sun Nov 23, 2003 6:54 pm

Thanks for the information msbee because here in PR no information has comed out about it although it was nothing big but neverless it is something that we have to know if our neighbors in the islands are fine.
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#3 Postby Lindaloo » Sun Nov 23, 2003 8:26 pm

Glad you came out okay msbee!! Bet that was scary.
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#4 Postby Stephanie » Sun Nov 23, 2003 10:24 pm

Have you felt tremors before? I'm glad that you are alright!
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Re: Earthquake tremor in St. Maarten last night

#5 Postby donsutherland1 » Sun Nov 23, 2003 11:04 pm

I was once on vacation in Quebec City (Thanksgiving Holidays 1988 to be exact) and felt one of the stronger quakes up that way--6.4. Ironically, it followed just a few months after a 4.0 tremor in NYC, so I recognized it for what it was. Fortunately, the epicenter was in the Charlevoix region and the most severe impact was toppled pine trees and not buildings. Still, it was an unforgettable memory.
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#6 Postby Typhoon_Willie » Sun Nov 23, 2003 11:26 pm

Here is a link from the Recent World Earthquake site regarding the Earth Quake in the British Virgin islands...

http://mapserver2.esri.com/cgi-bin/eq?f ... &Map.y=162
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#7 Postby msbee » Mon Nov 24, 2003 10:00 am

we have felt these tremors before.. it is always a funny feeling.
It unnerves you. our whole house shook.
The temors really are never that strong and they last only moments.
I can't imagine how it would feel to experience a really big one
and I don't want to find out either.
here is a link to the seismic research unit of the University of the West Indies which monitors these things
http://www.uwiseismic.com/
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#8 Postby Typhoon_Willie » Mon Nov 24, 2003 10:43 am

Very understandable indeed Msbee! Neither would like to feel the full force of a EarthQuake!
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#9 Postby JCT777 » Mon Nov 24, 2003 1:48 pm

msbee - I am glad to hear that this was not a major earthquake.
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#10 Postby HurricaneGirl » Mon Nov 24, 2003 5:25 pm

msbee,

I was curious to know if you guys ever get tsunamis or big waves generated from those Earthquake Tremors?
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#11 Postby msbee » Mon Nov 24, 2003 6:20 pm

Huirricanegirl
no we never have, becasue usually these are small tremors.
the Tidal waves seem to be more common in the Pacitic than in the Atlantic.

With a large earthquake occurring or a volcano erupting, it certainly is a possibility that a tsunami could occur., however.

I took the following from this link
http://poseidon.uprm.edu/

"Lander et al. (2002) reported that since 1498 there have been 91 “tsunamis” in the Caribbean region. Among them, Lander et al. has verified that twenty-seven are true, verifiable tsunamis and additional nine wave events are considered to be very likely true tsunamis. In fact, in the Caribbean Sea region we have all of the potential tsunami-generating sources: submarine earthquakes, subaerial or submarine landslides, and underwater explosions. According to Jansma and Mattioli (2003), Puerto Rico and the northern Virgin Islands sit within a broad zone of deformation between two larger plates: the North American to the north and the Caribbean to the south. This separate microplate moves approximately 15 mm/yr relative to North America and 3 mm/yr relative to the Caribbean. This means that offshore faults along which earthquakes can occur must separate Puerto Rico from both the North American and Caribbean plates. The landslide-tsunami threat for the island comes from the existence of the Puerto Rico Trench just north of the island, along which there is evidence of a large slump, with a potential volume of approximately 900-1500 km3 (Schwab et al., 1993; Grindlay, 1998) and many other smaller ones (ten Brink and Smith, 2003). Finally, the underwater explosion tsunami threat comes from the presence of an active underwater volcano, called Kick’em Jenny, which lies at the southeastern Caribbean just north of the island of Grenada. "

so anything is possible!
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#12 Postby cycloneye » Mon Nov 24, 2003 6:26 pm

Yes Puerto Rico is more in danger of a big quake because of the trench to our north and the plate in the mona passage and the last 6.9 quake at the Dominican Republic was created by that fault.The last big quake that PR has had was in 1918 a 7.1 and we haved been told here by experts in geology that PR is due for a big quake in the not distant future.But of course we dont know when that would happen as forecasting quakes is still very difficult to do.
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#13 Postby HurricaneGirl » Wed Nov 26, 2003 10:55 am

:crazyeyes: :crazyeyes: :crazyeyes: :crazyeyes: :crazyeyes: :crazyeyes: :crazyeyes: :crazyeyes:
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#14 Postby msbee » Wed Nov 26, 2003 11:06 am

an interesting update to this is the fact that on Monday night 36 pilot whales beached themslves on French St. Martin.
I posted information about this in the Off Topic Forum.
I contacted a scientist at the University of West Indies Seismic Research Unit asking if the earthquake tremors could cause the whales to become disoriented
he stated:
"As far as I know there have been no studies on this but it is not totally unreasonable that earthquakes could unsettle whales. They have a very keen sense of hearing I believe and earthquakes do generate sounds that they might hear. "
and he sent me this link:
http://www.deafwhale.com/stranding/evolution.html

Food for thought!
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#15 Postby btangy » Wed Nov 26, 2003 9:38 pm

It's possible. I've heard stories of animals acting strangely before seismic events.
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