Hazard Roundup--October 2007

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Scott Horvath:

Welcome everyone and thanks for listening to the USGS CoreCast, I'm Scott Horvath. And of course today we're doing Hazards Roundup episode for October 2007. Let's go ahead and get started. We had a pair of 6.8 earthquakes, in the middle of the month, one on the 15^th in New Zealand and one on the 24^th in Indonesia.

There was also a 5.6 earthquake that struck the San Francisco Bay Area, October 30^th around 8:04 PM. The thing to note about this one is that it was the largest earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area since the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. So, although it wasn't as large as that one, it was certainly felt widely across central California. And so far there's been over 60,000 responses to the "Did You Feel It?" part of the website, part of the Earthquakes websites. You can, of course, go there to earthquake.usgs.gov, click on the link on the left hand side for the earthquake, for the 5.6, and you'll see under the maps tab there's a "Did You Feel It" section where you can actually click on that link, and you fill out the form, and you can see all the current responses to how many people actually reported this earthquake and the level of shaking that they felt. So go ahead and check out that website if you haven't been there yet. Hopefully you all have, if not then this will be your first entry into it.

There was also a 7.2 earthquake that happened near the Northern Mariana Islands. So another significant earthquake event.

In the world of landslides, we have a few items here. We have some that were associated with Typhoon Krosa out in Taiwan, or near Taiwan, that happened near the beginning of October. There was also one that happened in the beginning of October in San Diego and one along the Oregon coast near Canby on Highway 99.

And of course, as we talk about wildfires this is a serious topic right now because of what is happening in California. Our own Clarice Ransom did a recent CoreCast with Erik Berg, from the USGS, talking about the science behind wildfires. The science that USGS is involved with before a wildfire occurs, during a wildfire, and, of course, after a wildfire. So if you haven't heard that yet, go ahead and take a listen. It's pretty interesting stuff in there and it's exciting to know the types of science that actually occur as a result of a wildfire, or even before a wildfire. So go ahead and listen to that.

Of course you can go to the GEOMAC website for recent wildfire information updates. That address is geomac (that's g-e-o-m-a-c) dot usgs dot gov. Keep going to it though, we definitely want you to keep in touch with what's happening around your area, if you're living in California, or if you're not living in California. And you can also visit the Natural Hazards Gateway, the wildfire area. That's at usgs.gov-slash-hazards-slash-wildfires where you'll find more links to additional wildfire information, as well as press releases and other items related to that type of hazard.

And as we switch focus over to volcanoes, there is still the new direction of the lava flow at Kilauea in Hawaii and Mount St. Helens, of course, is still growing a lava dome. So that is certainly not stopping anytime soon.

And that does it for this episode of the USGS CoreCast. Thanks for listening and of course keep tuning in. Tell your friends, tell your family, tell your neighbors about the USGS CoreCast. We're doing a lot of exciting things, a lot of exciting science and certainly we are not short of things to talk about. As well I want to refer everyone back to a previous episode where we ask you to send in your questions. If you have science questions you want to send in that you want us to answer, we'll take those questions, send them out to our scientists, and we'll get the answers from them and we'll share them with you. So, your questions...it'll be your episode. So please send those into the CoreCast team. You can email us at corecast@usgs.gov.

And, of course, as always the CoreCast is a product of the U.S. Geological Survey, Department of the Interior. I'm Scott Horvath saying, "Keep it cool."

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Mentioned in this episode:

• Earthquakes web site
• "The Science of Wildfires" USGS CoreCast with Erik Berg
• GEOMAC - Wildfire Information Updates
• Natural Hazards Gateway - Wildfires

Music credit: "A Mastermind's Plan of Evil"-Edgen