Rendered at 08:34:58 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Cloudflare Workers.
Taek 15 hours ago [-]
Was on the 6th floor of a tower. Shaking lasted almost 2 minutes. There was no damage as far as I could tell (Medellín) but they still evacuated everyone to inspect the building. City is in a bit of chaos, people are fine but unsettled, and the comms lines are clogged with people presumably calling their families.
Was a bit tense to see my phone alerts going off over and over, continually increasing the estimate of the earthquake strength, followed by the shaking getting worse.
For people who don't know, those phone alerts give you literally like 5 seconds of heads up. By the time I finished reading the first message, the shaking had already started. And I got the message while I was holding my phone and using it.
IDK why it's so much more chill than the "child abduction" alerts I get. Those are straight up adrenaline-inducing so I've disabled them.
pibaker 20 minutes ago [-]
As someone living somewhere with a high chance of receiving a natural disaster warning I hate the AMBER alerts. How am I supposed to know if I need to evacuate immediately or just need to look for a car last seen three hundred miles away?
It's not even like the children's lives are in actual danger. Most of these alerts seem to be about custody disputes, in the vein of the kid went to his daddy's place for the weekend and hasn't been back by Monday 7am.
LeoPanthera 7 hours ago [-]
> IDK why it's so much more chill than the "child abduction" alerts I get.
Japan, who had the first earthquake early warning system, did research and discovered that scary sounds made people panic, which is a bad thing in a situation when you need people to act quickly. Their standard alert sound is a fairly pleasant chime.
The downside is that some people now have panic reactions to the EEW sound, since it is standardized. I guess sometimes you can't win.
If you look up the sound, don't play it if you are in Japan. That's extremely no bueno.
joquarky 5 hours ago [-]
This seems similar to the euphemism treadmill.
colordrops 10 hours ago [-]
I regularly get "adult missing" alerts in Los Angeles, often with no more content than that. Absolutely useless. I can't think of any reason they send those out other than abject brain damaged incompetence or priming for some false flag.
xenadu02 13 hours ago [-]
That's unavoidable. We now have shake alerts in CA but if the quake happens on the Hayward fault across the bay San Francisco isn't going to get much warning no matter what anyone does. By best estimates we may get 15s of warning.
Hobadee 11 hours ago [-]
15s is enough to book it to a close stairwell in some cases. I used to work in a dodgy building in the city. Any time one of those shake alerts hit, I would sprint to the stairwell and everyone would look at me funny. Jokes on them when the big one hits!
fragmede 10 hours ago [-]
Depends. Surving means you have to deal with the aftermath. That's not going to be pretty.
robocat 10 hours ago [-]
Need a rumble alert
dudus 13 hours ago [-]
The heads up is enough to read the message but not enough to decide if you need to act on it or not. Before you can process it the shaking starts.
loloquwowndueo 13 hours ago [-]
You always need to act on it. Get an earthquake alert? Run outside. You can go back if it was a false alert.
In Mexico City the seismic alert gives like a minute (sensors are on the coast off Guerrero 350km away). Communities closer to the usual epicenter get almost no warning.
obmelvin 12 hours ago [-]
Before one can action one needs time to read and process whether the alert is for earthquake, tsunami, child abduction, etc
lukan 12 hours ago [-]
Those things could be solved with better UI (pictures, colors, ..) to see on one glance what is going on.
loloquwowndueo 11 hours ago [-]
First word of the alert : EARTHQUAKE. What do you do?
There are no tsunamis in Mexico City haha
obmelvin 9 hours ago [-]
I don't see the point of focusing the conversation on Mexico City. You may be far enough from the fault line to have plenty of time to react, but not everyone does (as you acknowledge). You may not have tsunamis, but that doesn't change the fact that one needs to know WHAT to react to.
You are welcome to think it is ridiculous for needing 5 seconds to process what alert is going off. But the simple reality is no good disaster plan should assume that everyone will immediately understand what is happening.
9 hours ago [-]
hdgvhicv 11 hours ago [-]
Well if there are then the world is really screwed.
recursivecaveat 3 hours ago [-]
I wonder if that is enough to help actually. Better that you be holding your phone than a knife or a pot of water when the shaking starts. On the other hand you are startling those people.
moscoe 13 hours ago [-]
The phone alerts sound quite dystopian and unsettling. As if the earth shaking and feeling of imminent doom wasn’t chaotic enough, now you have yet another element of annoyance and distress added to the mix as a cherry on top. Just enough of a distraction in a life/death situation to tilt the scales in a negative direction.
chiph 12 hours ago [-]
They sound that way to be unique and attention-getting. They have to cut through the background noise of 21st century life.
Here's a (totally unsafe!) demo from the 80's of why sirens sound the way they do. Do not attempt at home.
There are different sounds for different situations. I don't know the regulations (presumably they exist) that say when a particular sound should be used.
The first is the default fire alarm noise in Britain, probably what I've heard most often.
I heard "LF Buzz" (2:32) in a nightclub, where it cut through the music. (I remember it as even more "yucky", maybe there were multiple sounders in the room.)
haykuro 13 hours ago [-]
Knowing this, if you get the alert, get to safety immediately.
That alone can help save people.
5 seconds is still time purchased for those who use it wisely.
ls612 7 hours ago [-]
Google can detect major earthquakes about 15-30 seconds before visible shaking because of the huge network of accelerometers on Android phones worldwide. Those seconds can save lives if used properly.
nullorempty 10 hours ago [-]
ha, i immediately think alert from a three letter company's on-call app. Now that's unsettling and straight fucking offensive!
AngryData 12 hours ago [-]
It could help people react better too by confirming what they are feeling is an earthquake and not a train or plane or your neighbors. It could also wake someone seconds before so they are more aware when it happens and not awakening in primal panic mid quake.
It isn't a huge help, but broadcasting to everyone in range of certain towers shouldn't be dystopian.
Beijinger 10 hours ago [-]
Nah. Not really. I am used to phone alerts from Kyiv. When Putin and Klischko were making a pissing contest in the sky over Kyiv.
raybb 14 hours ago [-]
Whenever I want to follow what's happening with a natural disaster like this, where many friends and family are potentially affected, I always use the Wikipedia page, which tends to have the most up-to-date information very quickly. It helps me avoid zooming in on the news and seeing rehashed articles posted on multiple websites.
Didn't feel it but apparently it lasted several minutes and there was a lot of panic here in Bogota. Could see lots of people going out of their apartments in pijamas.
Also TIL that in 2023, while in a smaller earthquake webcam streamers (adult entretainers) went out of their apartments in lingerie.
LollipopYakuza 15 hours ago [-]
Same here in Medellin. I can't imagine how it felt at San José
c6400sc 16 hours ago [-]
The national paper has a bunch of articles above the fold: https://www.eltiempo.com .
20+ confirmed dead in Pereira, a third-tier city with population of ~500,000. Many wounded.
jofer 16 hours ago [-]
Thankfully, it's a fairly deep (>100km) subduction zone earthquake. That means less immediate damage from ground acceleration than it could be from an earthquake of that size. However, a very large area may have seen significant liquefaction of soils in valleys and landslides on steep slopes. I'd wager we won't hear about most of the damage initially in the press.
TheAlchemist 10 hours ago [-]
Really curious if it's related somehow to the Venezuela one.
Interestingly, New Zealand also experienced a well above average frequency of shakes recently, although the scientist don't see any relation yet.
I have family in this area in Valle del Cauca. We've heard from my immediate family and they're okay, but communication is spotty and we don't have a great sense of how bad things are yet. We fly into Matecaña International Airport in Pereira and it looks like the terminal had major damage and at least a few deaths. Shocking and horrifying stuff.
Beijinger 10 hours ago [-]
My bed was shaking. I thought the guy in the other room had rough sex. Just realized when I got up, based on the warning message on my phone, that it was an earthquake.
Beijinger 10 hours ago [-]
I mean, it happens when you are half asleep. Later I realized that this would have been impossible with a prestressed concrete ceiling/floor.
baristaGeek 9 hours ago [-]
Lived it from my 20th floor apartment in Medellin. It was scary af, my wife started crying, but friends and family are OK.
Interesting tech fact: A friend of mine who lives in SF couldn't communicate with his parents who were in the countryside near Pereira (one of the 2 or 3 most devastated cities) because comms were pretty bad, but luckily they had Starlink to be able communicate.
YesBox 16 hours ago [-]
Statistical anomaly detected: this morning I woke up from an earth quake in my dream. It was powerful enough to really sway the buildings and room I was in. Im in Texas though, but >= 7.0 earthquakes only happen a handful of times a year.
e: first time I dreamed of an earthquake
jandrewrogers 15 hours ago [-]
Magnitude 7.x earthquakes happen 1-2 times per month.
dylan604 15 hours ago [-]
when was this? USGS shows no earthquake in Texas. Are you trying to say that Texas as >= 7.0 earthquakes a handful of times a year? According to wiki[0], Texas has never had anything close to a 7.0
Sorry for the confusion, the earthquake was just in my dream. When I woke up there was not one
xattt 15 hours ago [-]
Unfortunately, USGS seismometers are not sensitive enough to capture intravisumal events.
spogbiper 14 hours ago [-]
once while visiting Peru, I had a vivid memorable dream that my cat was jumping on the bed. woke up to learn that I'd slept through an earthquake.
salsa_catsup 7 hours ago [-]
Twitter has videos of people getting crushed (probably dead) by falling facade as they try to exit the building. I guess it's still considered smart to try to exit your building in a quake? Maybe it depends on the building.
WhiteDawn 14 hours ago [-]
I hope in my lifetime we discover a way to predict earthquakes better, the danger to life from them would be significantly less if there was sufficient notification.
We can alert for storms, tornadoes, volcanoes, hurricanes, typhoons, and even somewhat extraterrestrial disasters like asteroids.
The earth itself must move in predictable patterns similar to the weather, and I'm sure there is decades of research around this I'll never even approach to understanding. Just surprising to have such a big knowledge gap that affects humanity year round
russdill 8 hours ago [-]
We are actually pretty good at predicting the long term for specific regions. This allows building codes to be based on the seismic activity of the region. Sadly this isn't something that's practical in many parts of the world
threatripper 14 hours ago [-]
I fear that we can only predict them if we deliberately trigger them to release the energy.
11 hours ago [-]
mohamedkoubaa 14 hours ago [-]
Even if it's predictable the opaqueness of the earth crust makes predictive models hard
gpm 14 hours ago [-]
Really I suspect that's the only hard part. If we had accurate 3d models of the structure (well 4d, 3d models over time) it would probably be reasonably easy to estimate how much strain it can take, and how much strain there is... Maybe not predict-to-the-second levels of detail but at least to predict that a quake we see is likely to be a precursor to a much larger one or is likely that peak.
But getting that data seems... practically impossible at our current tech level.
mhurron 13 hours ago [-]
> at least to predict that a quake we see is likely to be a precursor to a much larger one or is likely that peak.
That we can basically do. "Observations show that the chance of an earthquake being followed by a larger one nearby and within a week is about 5%."
It is an incredibly safe bet that any earthquake is not the sign of a larger one.
gpm 13 hours ago [-]
5% within a week is a very high set of odds for such rare events. Or to look at it from the other more relevant direction 70% of magnitude 7 or larger quakes have detected foreshocks...
A few days ago, Egypt experienced its most violent earthquake in a long time. It occurred near the Suez Canal and lasted for about 30 seconds. It was absolutely terrifying.
0xbeebs 14 hours ago [-]
In Bogotá I was asleep and a bunch of random alarms from other buildings woke me up. Didn't notice any shaking but the ceiling was making noises.
BenzeneDream 16 hours ago [-]
Was pretty intense. Buildings and windows shaking.
mito88 11 hours ago [-]
venezuela and now this...
Izikiel43 16 hours ago [-]
Is this related to the one in Venezuela earlier this year?
c6400sc 16 hours ago [-]
This is the other side of the continent (Pacific Coast).
dylan604 15 hours ago [-]
Doesn't mean it's not related.
tonyhart7 16 hours ago [-]
seems there is a lot of activity in south america
mito88 11 hours ago [-]
Venezuela and now this....
.
cineticdaffodil 16 hours ago [-]
Is there something like a domino theory for earth quakes? Like first some stress releases in Venezuella, then the same stress travells further up the boundary, triggering a earth quake in a different region? Working its way up the plate boundary towards a big one like a fuse?
selectodude 16 hours ago [-]
Yes, the seismic waves that are from one earthquake can absolutely give an extra oomph to a fault line that's somewhere else.
15 hours ago [-]
thataccount 16 hours ago [-]
Colombia has been doing some rocking and rolling lately.
BenzeneDream 16 hours ago [-]
Colombia*
barbarr 16 hours ago [-]
I read the title as 5 km S of San Jose (as in bay area) at first
shadow28 16 hours ago [-]
There's dozens of cities and towns named San José globally.
14 hours ago [-]
sophacles 15 hours ago [-]
Some amusing data about this in the US:
There's at least one[a] town/city called San Jose in at least[b] 4 US states. Not to mention other things named such (e.g. 2 different San Jose creeks in California, neither of which is in the San Jose metro - one in LA and one in Monterey)
[a] there appears to be 2 towns in new mexico called San Jose
[a.2] Illinois amuses me because there's a San Jose and St Joseph both, and both are small.
[b] There appears to be a tiny (pop 15) town called San Jose in Texas, but it's unclear if that's officially incorporated, etc.
Was a bit tense to see my phone alerts going off over and over, continually increasing the estimate of the earthquake strength, followed by the shaking getting worse.
For people who don't know, those phone alerts give you literally like 5 seconds of heads up. By the time I finished reading the first message, the shaking had already started. And I got the message while I was holding my phone and using it.
IDK why it's so much more chill than the "child abduction" alerts I get. Those are straight up adrenaline-inducing so I've disabled them.
It's not even like the children's lives are in actual danger. Most of these alerts seem to be about custody disputes, in the vein of the kid went to his daddy's place for the weekend and hasn't been back by Monday 7am.
Japan, who had the first earthquake early warning system, did research and discovered that scary sounds made people panic, which is a bad thing in a situation when you need people to act quickly. Their standard alert sound is a fairly pleasant chime.
The downside is that some people now have panic reactions to the EEW sound, since it is standardized. I guess sometimes you can't win.
If you look up the sound, don't play it if you are in Japan. That's extremely no bueno.
In Mexico City the seismic alert gives like a minute (sensors are on the coast off Guerrero 350km away). Communities closer to the usual epicenter get almost no warning.
There are no tsunamis in Mexico City haha
You are welcome to think it is ridiculous for needing 5 seconds to process what alert is going off. But the simple reality is no good disaster plan should assume that everyone will immediately understand what is happening.
Here's a (totally unsafe!) demo from the 80's of why sirens sound the way they do. Do not attempt at home.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lsfczwy3KOE
This fire alarm sounder has 32 possible sounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9os5EtDiVC4
The first is the default fire alarm noise in Britain, probably what I've heard most often.
I heard "LF Buzz" (2:32) in a nightclub, where it cut through the music. (I remember it as even more "yucky", maybe there were multiple sounders in the room.)
That alone can help save people.
5 seconds is still time purchased for those who use it wisely.
It isn't a huge help, but broadcasting to everyone in range of certain towers shouldn't be dystopian.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Colombia_earthquake
Also TIL that in 2023, while in a smaller earthquake webcam streamers (adult entretainers) went out of their apartments in lingerie.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/successive-m5-plus-earthquakes...
Interesting tech fact: A friend of mine who lives in SF couldn't communicate with his parents who were in the countryside near Pereira (one of the 2 or 3 most devastated cities) because comms were pretty bad, but luckily they had Starlink to be able communicate.
e: first time I dreamed of an earthquake
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Texas
We can alert for storms, tornadoes, volcanoes, hurricanes, typhoons, and even somewhat extraterrestrial disasters like asteroids.
The earth itself must move in predictable patterns similar to the weather, and I'm sure there is decades of research around this I'll never even approach to understanding. Just surprising to have such a big knowledge gap that affects humanity year round
But getting that data seems... practically impossible at our current tech level.
That we can basically do. "Observations show that the chance of an earthquake being followed by a larger one nearby and within a week is about 5%."
https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-probability-earthquake-a-fore...
It is an incredibly safe bet that any earthquake is not the sign of a larger one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreshock
https://earthquakeinsights.substack.com/p/deadly-m74-earthqu...
There's at least one[a] town/city called San Jose in at least[b] 4 US states. Not to mention other things named such (e.g. 2 different San Jose creeks in California, neither of which is in the San Jose metro - one in LA and one in Monterey)
[a] there appears to be 2 towns in new mexico called San Jose
[a.2] Illinois amuses me because there's a San Jose and St Joseph both, and both are small.
[b] There appears to be a tiny (pop 15) town called San Jose in Texas, but it's unclear if that's officially incorporated, etc.