Originally posted by CatHerder
A 5.7 earthquake is about as disasterous as a large semi truck rumbling on by beside your house. Sure, some dishes rattle, and maybe something gets broken because it falls down - but it sure as heck doesn't cause loss of life (unless a picture frame falls on your head) and it certainly doesn't cause any disaster (unless that picture was a Rembrant and it fell in your pool).

Well if you stop and think for a minute here. There was already high waterlevels b/c of Jeanne. That is one of the effects you get from storms and hurricanes, you know. A tsunami on top of that added to the disaster, it actually was the disaster if you ask me. Have you ever experienced a tsunami?

Originally posted by Hellmutt

Originally posted by CatHerder
A 5.7 earthquake is about as disasterous as a large semi truck rumbling on by beside your house. Sure, some dishes rattle, and maybe something gets broken because it falls down - but it sure as heck doesn't cause loss of life (unless a picture frame falls on your head) and it certainly doesn't cause any disaster (unless that picture was a Rembrant and it fell in your pool).

Well if you stop and think for a minute here. There was already high waterlevels b/c of Jeanne. That is one of the effects you get from storms and hurricanes, you know. A tsunami on top of that added to the disaster, it actually was the disaster if you ask me. Have you ever experienced a tsunami?

A 5.7 is not going to cause a tidal wave like you're thinking (they're not called tsunami's when they occur in the Atlantic Ocean by the way). Tidal waves are caused by rapid uplift, or rapid downslip of the tetonic plate underneath the water. Rapid implies massive force, a 5.7 is a "lot" of force (not massive) but it's all relative -- I just doubt there would be a large tidal wave from a small quake like this.

I believe that Catherder has made an overgeneralization relating to earthquakes.
I've lived most of my life within a few miles of the San Andreas faultline, and for a couple of years worked within eyesight of the faultline. (older employees liked to point out just how many feet they have watched a certain split in the hillside grow over the last few decades).

The effects of an earthquake rely not only on magnitude but on local geography and of course distance from epicenter. For example, the town of La Quinta, CA (which i grew up near) is built in a shallow bowl of sand at the foot of a mountain. It gets a good shake out of any quake in the area, because the rock beneath the sand acts like a hopper.
How durable or fragile local features are is another matter. even a little shake would get my attention if i were climbing around a pile of boulders in Joshua Tree.

So what you have to consider is although an island won't normally be washed by a quake in that area, you have to be open to the prospect that some oddity of local geography could have made matters worse. Afterall, on one hand we had initial reports of a serious disaster, followed by denials which are subject to some debate.

We say "They ADMITTED IT!" and you say "But it's theoretically impossible". It's not exactly a fool-proof arguement on either side, so hypotheticals come into play, and the answer so far is not clear, but certainly not decided against those who are concerned about a possible disaster.

Him that is wierd, almost like Atlantis.

Originally posted by someguyy
Him that is wierd, almost like Atlantis.

Please Byrd, don't hurt him.

The thing is that we're A LOT more certain that this one exists, we know where it is, and we have a pretty good idea of what happened to it.

Atlantis, could really be at just about any point from Gibralter to Bolivia (and really there are some reasons to suspect the black sea even), but thats only if it existed of course.
Atlantis could have been the victim of just about anything, but really the best arguement is that it was destroyed and forgotten by the Greeks a little after Troy. I could go into detail, but I always do and I'm sick of it.
Just for the sake of driving the point home- we still dont even know if there -was- an atlantis.

Tortue on the other hand, we do know about. (At least I do... somewhere along the line a few people started translating the name into Spanish and sent Byrd looking for a different Island off the coast of venezuela). Tortue is the island north of haiti, in some atlases, like mine, it will not be labeled because Cape Hatien's label all but obscures the island, but you can dig online a bit and find out that what I'm saying is true.

As for what happened to it... I've defended the possibility that things are more severe than what the government says, but I'm not about to say that it went down Atlantis style. If I had an aircraft (which would imply having money) I'd find time between trips to disneyland to go see if it's there, but I don't have money and so I don't have an aircraft, and so I never go to disneyland and can not check out La Tortue between trips. All I can say is that I'm really curious and don't know for sure.

May I ask who resurrected this thread from the dead? And why? Has there been some new information on an island flooding from 4 years ago?