Discussing today¨s Puny Earthquake

Todays shaker.. More like 2 seconds. It shook your house?_ If I hadn´t been lying quietly in bed I wouldn´t have felt it. Looks like you´re not from California where these happen almost daily. BTW I am a PhD geologist. As far as a major quake, Medellin is one of the safest places anywhere around the Pacific because of its massive basement rock structure. Disclaimer...But then again, Mother Nature can be a bitch. Seriously the odds are NOTHING compared to anywhere else in the Circum Pacific for a destructive quake. . Check out my article from a Few years ago in¨MEDELLIN lIVING¨. Natural disasters simply are not a way of life here. We are very lucky and wise to have chosen Medellin.

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Eric Myers Good to know
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Larry Rose No hurricanes either or tornadoes.. jajaja of course as one gringo complained, ¨Because of the rains it´s hard to plan picnics. i hate the weather here.¨ jjajajaaajjjjaa TRUE post!.
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Gwilym Koryniaka its actually the first 1 I've felt in Medell'in in a total of 3 yrs here, 1 yr living in Cali I felt various
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Larry Rose Cali or California?
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Gwilym Koryniaka Cali, in Pereira I also felt 2. Thanks for the explanation, I was actually talking about te fact that I hadn't felt any earthquakes whilst in Medellín a few days ago
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Larry Rose What happens is the epicenters are not anywhere near here but the EQ waves, much diminished by the distance can still give us a rap rap brrr like this morning.
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Larry Rose For those who took Geol one, Med is built on an andesite batholith. Andesite is a massive igneous dark rock, the one you see on the roadcuts. It moves very little and quickly transfers any seismic waves thru it without much shaking.
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Thomas Young I am curious what is all the sediment .....is that an old meteorite hit that deposited thousands of feet of silt....you can move a mountain here with just a backhoe....not a rock to be found??? any ideas
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Bradford W. Bebb old old mountains.
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Conner Patrick More worried about shotty Colombian engineering than the bedrock. Some houses seem like they could be blown over by the big bad wolf
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Larry Rose The red soil on top of the basalt is also very strong. It is rich in clay which is why it holds vertical cliff faces along the roads. It is called laterite and is a product of the weathering of andesite here caused by water leeching the soil and changing the feldspars in the rock to clay minerals. This is common in tropical and sub-tropical regions. No, no meteorites. In any mountainous region landslides are possible, in fact you can easily see some scars and accumulation zones in the valley. But because the soil is so competent to maintain its slope they are rare here to compared to other areas of Colombia, or anywhere else. .
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Chris Jeffus Here's an interesting map I found: https://app.temblor.net/

According to that the largest likely earthquake in our lifetime (not sure how lifetime is defined) is a 6.3 (more or less). It looks like there's a fault right next to Medellin too.
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Derek Austin Scholl from the 14th floor of my hotel it shook my bed so much i woke up but glad to hear someone informed explaining why catastrophic risk is low here tnx
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Larry Rose Yes, there is a fault that runs along the bottom of the western hills. As far as records go the epicenters on the fault are at least 100 miles south. The strain meters along this fault in Medellin are inactive meaning that we cannot expect a major quake anytime soon. Again, Nature is not mocked. The 6.5 prediction is absolutely the worst case scenario and is issued by geologists to cover themselves... me too, that´s why I say anything is possible, but the odds are greatly against it. Try living along the west coast of North America where the strain meters are raging.
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Larry Rose High rises shake on purpose. The most dangerous bldgs are those six stories or so high because they resonate against the EQ energy. In Mexico City it was the six floor apt houses that pancaked.
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Larry Rose There are faults all around the Pacific... the question is are they regionally active. Here, No. In any case, destruction is caused rarely by the initial shock but by the reaction of the bldg to extended shaking with soft rock, bad soil and unreinforced brick bldgs. For these reasons, Med is relatively safe,,, note I said relatively.
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RECENT ACTIVITY
did anyone else just feel an earthquake at 7:01 am. The walls shook for a few seconds here in Guarne

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Heri Barreto Woke me up around 7 am. Fun time! Not!
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Joey Sipos I swore I had a dream about an earthquake this morning... must have been real!
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