Haiti could be hit by another large quake

http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20100202/wl_mcclatchy/3416418

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By Fred Tasker, Miami Herald Fred Tasker, Miami Herald – Tue Feb 2, 3:17 pm ET

MIAMI — The chance of another big earthquake in Haiti in the near future is great enough that people in Port-au-Prince should sleep in tents — not even in buildings that survived the Jan. 12 quake apparently unscathed, geologists said Monday.

A report by the United States Geological Survey says the probability of an aftershock of magnitude 7 or greater in Haiti in the next 30 days is 3 percent, the probability of one magnitude 6 or greater is 25 percent, and of one magnitude 5 or greater is about 90 percent.

"Three percent may not sound big, but it is pretty big in terms of what we might have expected after a standard earthquake,'' said Dr. Tim Dixon , professor of geophysics at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science in Miami .

In a typical earthquake, the probability of another quake of the same magnitude that soon would be "vanishingly small, close to 0," he said. end quote.

This demonstrates to me that we are in atypical territory as far as earthquakes go. Whether this is just in the Haiti area or extends around the "Ring of Fire" I'm not sure because I don't study these things for my living.

However, if we are in an atypical time all along the "Ring of Fire" then I think we all should be very vigilant who live anywhere near the ring of fire.


Note: The ring of fire is a circle around the Pacific ocean basically. If you start in the Aleutian Islands next to Alaska and then follow down the Canadian Coast to Mt. Baker, Mt. Rainier, Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Hood, Crater Lake, Mt. McLaughlin, Mt. Shasta and Mt. Lassen. Then if we follow all the fault lines and plates down the coast of California into Mexico, Central America and follow the fault lines off to Haiti, then return down the Chile side of South America then over to New Guinea and up through Indonesia, The Philippines, Japan, and then up to the Aleutian Islands again, you have the "Ring of Fire" which is the most active plate shifting area on earth at present.