M7.6 Earthquake in Panama | Hacker News Reader

M7.6 Earthquake in Panama

earthquake.usgs.gov

164 pointsgslin39 comments

I am in the hills just outside of penonome,panama. The initial rumble made the power go out and I could see visible shaking, but not quite enough to damage my house. There are some damaged homes and commercial buildings, but usually the older or poorly co structed ones. We are not used to earthquakes around here. There are still small rumbles happening even right now.

Still early, but so far local news does not look especially bad:

https://www.telemetro.com/nacionales/asi-se-vivio-el-fuerte-...

Looks like it was centered away from densely populated areas. Still pretty big.

Looking at the PAGER info, it looks like it was pretty far from the largest cities and only affected them, and Panama City in particular, minimally, which will limit the impact quite a bit.

https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us6000u18k...

I'm in Panama City and felt the shake. Wasn't too bad. Entire building got out. Seems fine now, no apparent damages as of yet

"THERE IS NO LONGER A TSUNAMI THREAT FROM THIS EARTHQUAKE." from tsunami.gov's last report 2min ago

Wonder if there could ever be enough damage resulting in the lake draining because the locks failed?

Yes. This quake was pretty far from the locks tho.

There was a M4.0 in the Dominican Republic earlier in the week.

https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/pr20262770...

as the scale is logarithmic a 4 is more than a thousand times lighter, imperceptible almost

In round numbers, a Mag-1 quake is 1 kg of TNT, Mag-3 is 1 ton, Mag-5 is 1 kiloton, and Mag-7 is a megaton. <<insert lots of handwaving>>

it was felt in Panama city, panama. Weve never had so many earthquakes in a lifetime perhaps a century

Well, gas is gonna go up

Given the distance, probably comfortably within canal design tolerances.

https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us6000u18k...

I think the idea is that anything that happens will make gas prices go up.

I think the marginal contribution of this event to that will be low.

Ok but is this good for Bitcoin?

> anything that happens will make gas prices go up.

In that case, let’s attack another major oil exporter.

Doing a 30 second visual check; everything looks normal.

https://multimedia.panama-canal.com/index.html

Holy weird map projection.

Is there a tsunami risk?

"Tsunami surges of 1 to 3 meters are projected for Panama coastlines, with waves of 0.3 to 1 meter forecast for Ecuador."

Am I ignorant or that’s not that bad?

Several hundred meters inland, as far as 2km

remember that other day Venezuela had a terrible earthquake

It's not called the Pacific Ring Of Fire for nothing. There's earthquakes all up and down the coast, from Chile all the way to Alaska and wrapping around to the Asian coasts, all the time.

Isn't Venezuela on the Atlantic?

It is, but there's a subduction zone just off their northern coast following the curve of the Lesser Antilles so I could see how someone might mistakenly lump it into the pacific ring. It's not that far away from the northern Andes, in the grand scheme of things.

It's mostly on the Caribbean Sea. Which kinda has its own little ring of fire - https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/tectonic/images/cari...

Many will remember the Haitian earthquakes making the news some years back.

does this cause blockage in the canal ?

Sit on a prop desk?

DYFI IX -- I think this is pretty bad.

> DYFI IX

Wanna tell us common folks what that means?

"Did You Feel It?" (on the same page)

https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us6000u18k...

A community-based Did You Feel It score of IX.

Scale is 1 to 12. This is a 9.

Sample size of.... 1 response...

352, actually.

only a single tile in an unpopulated area reported a 9, I think is what he meant.

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