Children flee as quake hits Kalgoorlie

I wouldn't be surprised if mining had some kind of impact, but one would assume that subject would have been studied extensively. With that said the Chinese have admitted they don't know what effects the Three Gorges Dam will have on earthquakes. One would only assume any changes in pressure would change the stress load on the local geography, either positive or negative.

reply to post by VonDoomen


Sorry VonDoomen... They're right... a 5.0 is significant. I for one believe that earthquakes (and volcanos) are increasing in both number and strength. I am glad of the coverage that ATS is giving the topic.

If we were posting up every 2.0 then I would say troll away. But for threads like this, maybe we should try to keep it to information relative to the topic.

Deny ignorance... ignore ignorant people.

This is particularly serious. This is not on an obvious plate boundary.

What is going on with this world?

I personally don't believe it happened unless I see it for myself, but if it did happen I imagine it has something to do with Thorshammer and his war on the reptilians. Just my opinion.

A small 3.3 magnitude quake hit Tennessee this morning. Blount County is the place it originated. That is around 20 miles south-southwest of Knoxville, Tenn.

There are reports that indicate the earthquake was felt across eastern Tennessee, far western North Carolina, and northern Georgia.



[edit on 20-4-2010 by TruthSeeker8300]

As I said in my post, YOU, and humanity have not been cataloging earthquakes to know whats unusual or not. sorry but that's a fact.

Secondly- i haven't really read anything here that's new.

thirdly- seriously

forth- these posts are typically a waste of time!

Linking Wikipedia here for the sake of simplicity, but this looks on par with Australia's history of earthquakes:

en.wikipedia.org...

I find it very hard to believe that mining has anything to do with this. The earth's crust is going to move whether we are mining or not. If anything, a better argument is saying that mining helps by triggering earthquakes before they build up even more resistance.

Originally posted by VonDoomen
As I said in my post, YOU, and humanity have not been cataloging earthquakes to know whats unusual or not. sorry but that's a fact.

Sorry let me clarify.... In the last 30 years of most recent records there has been an increase of Earthquakes and an increase of their strength.

Graph showing increase of ALL 6+ Mag earthquakes from 1973-Present
research.dlindquist.com...

Graph showing increase of TOTAL STRENGTH of ALL earthquakes from 1973-Present
research.dlindquist.com...

Graph showing increase of TOTAL MAGNITUDE of ALL earthquakes from 1973-Present
research.dlindquist.com...

Secondly- i haven't really read anything here that's new.

I believe this thread is about a NEW earthquake that just happened.

thirdly- seriously

Yes... seriously... I believe this thread is about a NEW earthquake that just happened.

forth- these posts are typically a waste of time!

I would typically avoid threads I thought a waste of time... especially if you’re going to waste ours and bring nothing valid to the discussion.

Thanks for the terra updates... keep em coming!~

reply to post by n o o d l z


Oh so you take the list of Earthquakes from ALL of Australia and say that a mag 5 in Kalgoorlie is par for the course?

That like taking the list of ALL quakes in the USA and saying it's on par to have a mag 5 in (for arguments sake) New York!

You do realise that Australia is a large land mass? About the same size as the USA actually, and our quakes are few and far between.

So for us it IS a big deal.

Largest earthquake in Kalgoorlie on record

20 April 2010
A magnitude 5.0 earthquake occurred ten kilometres south-west of Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, at 8:17am local time today.
"People have reported feeling this earthquake up to 200km away from the epicentre, and we have had reports of building damage within a 10km radius," said Senior Seismologist Dr David Jepsen.
"For an earthquake of this size we would expect the region to experience some aftershocks of a lesser magnitude," he said.
"This is the largest earthquake ever recorded in the Kalgoorlie-Coolgardie region. The previous largest was a magnitude 4.5 recorded in 1987," said Dr Jepsen.

.

reply to post by TruthSeeker8300


Now I know why my dawgs were raising cain for this morning (N.Ga.)
See this thread helped a lot IMHO

5+- is something to get your panties in a bunch I would have drawn up so tight I couldn't pass a greased BB

[edit on 20-4-2010 by hillbilly4rent]

reply to post by Sparkly_Eyed777


The part of this story that is missing here is the damage. With even minimal building codes, there should be little or no damage from anything under a 5.5 or even higher. Are the codes and construction there that bad?

reply to post by VonDoomen


Internet Troll

In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into a desired emotional response[1] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion

These forums are like channels on your television. If you don't want to read a thread, don't click on it.

reply to post by Blaine91555


It's not surprising to be honest seeing as how rare we experience earthquakes here just in general, let alone earthquakes of this magnitude. We don't build according to earthquake safe codes as we don't generally have earthquakes... which is why this is such an odd occurrence. :O

reply to post by dallas18


Well, I'm only in my early 20's as well, but from what I've read there hasn't been that many earthquakes here in Aus, so it seems like they've increased in number and magnitude. But I don't believe that necessarily means that they have, considering we didn't always have the technology to detect them or were always here to know how many there have ever been. I agree it's probably because of the internet news boom as well.

Originally posted by dallas18
As for the mining remark, quite strange indeed. But considering the size of the mining industry out there, if it was the cause.. somehow, I doubt they would admit it.

Yes, it was strange. I also watched a bit of Sky News last night and again something was mentioned about mining maybe having something to do with it. So I don't really know what to think. Also there are a lot of tunnels under Kalgoorlie-Boulder, so hopefully they don't give in or collapse or anything lol

But yeah, the mines had to be closed because of the quake because of how unsafe it is at the moment. There's some more info here

Mines in the area produce around 50,000 tonnes of nickel and a million ounces of gold a year.

"The report at the moment ... is that all mines have been evacuated and all miners have been tagged and accounted for. And no mine is working at the moment," Australian Workers Union National Secretary Paul Howes told Australian media.

Kalgoorlie is regarded as the mining capital of Australia, with some of the country's biggest gold mines, such as the Super Pit, and has historically been at the centre of Australian gold rushes.

I also had a look at the graph, thanks for posting it by the way it's really interesting to look at.

reply to post by VonDoomen

Originally posted by VonDoomen
for starters, no one can say the amount of earthquakes is "unusual". No one here has been alive long enough in geological terms to know whats usual and unusual for the earth!

Actually, yes I can say this is unusual. There aren't that many big earthquakes in Australia, like other posters have said, much less in Kalgoorlie. This earthquake is quite unusual for this area.

Secondly, nothing new or of importance is ever discussed in these threads. its usually de-escalates into haarp and earthquake weapons arguements.

Obviously you're coming from the position of thinking that I'm only mentioning this earthquake because I somehow think that some secret technology is at work i.e HAARP and therefore believe it to be of some importance in a grand conspiracy to prove that TPTB are trying to kill us all off. I don't blame you to be honest. There are a lot of those threads. But I don't believe this was HAARP or anything like that actually.

As far as I know, this was a natural occurrence. But what bothers me, is that the mining being done here might somehow be involved in this earthquake. As I've posted before:

David Jepsen, a senior seismologist with Geoscience Australia, told ABC Local Radio the earthquake was felt up to several hundred kilometres from where it struck.

"This is the largest earthquake that we've had in the region since we've recorded earthquakes here," he said.

"We can't rule out the effects of what the mining has done."

bolding mine

And as I've said before

Originally posted by Sparkly_Eyed777
there's a lot of money in mining here.

So, I guess there is something new being discussed here after all

reply to post by Blaine91555

Originally posted by Blaine91555
reply to post by Sparkly_Eyed777

 

The part of this story that is missing here is the damage. With even minimal building codes, there should be little or no damage from anything under a 5.5 or even higher. Are the codes and construction there that bad?

With Kalgoorlie-Boulder, a lot of the buildings are pretty old. Especially the ones in Boulder, and the Boulder area was the most damaged. There were a lot of hotels that were damaged there and most of them are quite old. For example the Golden Eagle. This is what it looked like before: before
This is what it looks like now: after

If you zoom in on the before photo, you can see it says '1902' at the top of the building.

Kalgoorlie on the other hand, is more modern and has better, newer buildings, and I haven't heard of much damage done there.

Just heard some news on the radio about the earthquake and whether or not mining operations had anything to do with it. I decided to look and see if there's anything I can find about this online. Here's what I found:

link

Experts ‘Unsure’ if Mining a Factor in Kalgoorlie Quake

Government science organisation Geoscience Australia has said it is unclear if mining near the town of Kalgoorlie was responsible for yesterday’s magnitude 5.0 earthquake.

The worst quake in 50 years in the region left buildings damaged and caused a halt in mining operations.

“It may have had some contribution, but we can’t ascertain whether it was solely due to the mine or a combination of factors and stuff like that,” the ABC quoted Geoscience’s David Jepson as saying.

“It’s really hard to actually say that.”

also

However expert opinion on whether mining was a factor appears divided with the Australian Earthquake Engineering Association reported by the Australian press as claiming mining at the nearby open cut goldfields did play a part in the quake.

So, if mining had a hand in this, what would that mean?

It's an interesting point Sparkly_Eyed777, I come from N.Z were in 1986 we had an earthquake of 6.8.
At the time, questions were being asked if the local Paper Mill, which uses geothermal steam for heating/power was somehow a contributing factor.
The reason was, everytime the Mill had a shut down or particularly, a strike, Earthquakes would come more often ( atleast 2 per day). Only small ones mind you, but noticeable.
Now they have changed the system, they extract steam while pumping water back down to maintain balance.

Anyways, I live now in Australia, and yes, Earthquakes are as rare as good Politicians!

To proof this point to the TROLLS, check out this page:

IRIS

Good Post

[edit on 21-4-2010 by Village Idiot]

reply to post by Village Idiot


Wow, now that's very interesting. And 6.8! Wow, that is big. I don't remember ever hearing about it before though, probably because I'm only 21 and it was in 1986, as you said.

But that's a pretty big earthquake, and it's even worse if, like you said, the local Paper Mill was thought to be a contributing factor. So it turned out it was partly to blame?

Originally posted by Village Idiot
Anyways, I live now in Australia, and yes, Earthquakes are as rare as good Politicians!

Lol, yup you could definitely say that.

reply to post by Sparkly_Eyed777


Yes it was big, you couldn't stand, power lines were making "whipping noises" and my little Datsun 180B bounced around and, at one point, stood on two wheels!
what made things worse, what we found out months later, was there where actually 2 Earthquakes, one sparked off the other.
I don't know much about them, but apparently they travel in "waves" and we ended up with 2 crossing each other, creating a worsened affect, right underneath were we lived, well that was the "experts" comments anyway.

Interesting side note, Farmers couldn"t round up the Sheep and Cattle that morning before it happened, they were all huddled in a corner scared, and the sky, I remember the colour was a strange Purple, like at sunset only it was Lunchtime.

Well I never did find out the truth if the Mill contributed to it or not, only that after they changed the system (injecting water back) in 1995, no more regular Earthquakes...... coincidence?

Maybe this ties into the Mines in Kalgoorlie or not, I'm no expert.
To me, removing Geothermal "pressure" would change things underground, possibly on a large scale, were as digging holes in the ground and causing earthquakes doesn't make sense, unless the Mines collapsed.

Maybe a Member on ATS with a better understanding of Earth Science could comment here.