Uma especialista americana do USGS considera que o balanço do sismo vai ser muito superior pois ocorreu aquilo que ela considera o "big one" da região, uma ruptura de uma falha ao longo de 275km numa região densamente povoada com milhões de pessoas. Ela teme o que terá acontecido nalgumas cidades devido à conjugação destes factores todos, sismo intenso e pouco profundo, milhões de pessoas e baixa qualidade de construção, recordando o
grande sismo de Tangshan que foi de 7.8 em 1976 em que nessa cidade com 1,5 milhões de habitantes apenas sobraram 2 edifícios intactos. O sismo de Tangshan foi o mais mortífero do século XX com centenas de milhares de mortos.
Chinese Quake Likely a Mega-Catastrophe
By Richard A. Kerr
ScienceNOW Daily News
12 May 2008
Researchers fear that the magnitude-7.9 earthquake that struck near the major city of Chengdu today will easily be China's biggest killer since 1976's Tangshan quake, conservatively estimated to have taken 250,000 lives. "I would think there's going to be horrific loss of life in this one," says seismologist Lucile Jones of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) office in Pasadena, California. The all-too-familiar combination of millions of people living by a major fault rupture in quake-vulnerable structures makes for an inevitably bad outcome, she says.
The Eastern Sichuan quake ruptured about 275 kilometers of a fault running northeastward between the easternmost mountains of the Tibetan Plateau and the densely populated Sichuan Basin. Chengdu, population 11 million, lies about 100 kilometers southeast of the epicenter. Jones studied the fault 25 years ago as a major threat because plate motions are pushing the mountains in the west upward and to the east along the thrust fault and over the basin. "This is the big earthquake for Sichuan," she says. "It's like San Francisco or Los Angeles having its big one."
According to data compiled by USGS in the aftermath of the quake, millions of people suffered strong shaking that would have caused heavy damage. USGS calculates that a total of 6.2 million people would have felt severe to extreme shaking that could cause heavy to very heavy damage to structures vulnerable to seismic shaking. Many structures in China are vulnerable, Jones notes. Another 11.7 million people would have felt very strong shaking capable of moderate to heavy damage to vulnerable structures. The 1976 quake--a magnitude-7.8--struck the city of Tangshan (population 1.5 million), leaving two buildings standing, Jones says. If that's any guide, Sichuan has "got to be really bad," she says.
Este video de uma camara de segurança mostra como o sismo durou imenso tempo.
A partir dos 4:50m. Reparem no aquário em cima do balcão. Vê-se melhor o video directamente no YouTube (basta clicar no video)
Mais videos:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=china+earthquake&search_type=
UTC DATE-TIME LAT LON DEPTH Region
5.0 2008/05/13 08:20:52 31.397 103.972 10.0 EASTERN SICHUAN, CHINA
5.0 2008/05/13 07:53:03 32.332 105.069 10.0 SICHUAN-GANSU BORDER REGION, CHINA
5.0 2008/05/13 07:19:17 32.472 105.338 10.0 SICHUAN-GANSU BORDER REGION, CHINA
5.9 2008/05/13 07:07:09 30.942 103.246 10.0 EASTERN SICHUAN, CHINA
5.0 2008/05/13 03:00:39 31.222 103.671 10.0 EASTERN SICHUAN, CHINA
5.3 2008/05/12 23:54:47 31.307 103.576 10.0 EASTERN SICHUAN, CHINA
5.4 2008/05/12 23:46:19 31.319 103.501 10.0 EASTERN SICHUAN, CHINA
5.3 2008/05/12 20:45:32 31.759 104.420 10.0 EASTERN SICHUAN, CHINA
5.6 2008/05/12 20:08:49 31.420 103.906 10.0 EASTERN SICHUAN, CHINA
5.1 2008/05/12 17:54:33 31.250 103.492 10.0 EASTERN SICHUAN, CHINA
5.1 2008/05/12 15:28:53 31.056 103.509 10.0 EASTERN SICHUAN, CHINA
5.1 2008/05/12 15:05:32 31.256 103.704 18.3 EASTERN SICHUAN, CHINA
5.1 2008/05/12 14:46:08 32.730 105.610 10.0 SICHUAN-GANSU BORDER REGION, CHINA
5.1 2008/05/12 14:15:27 32.140 104.613 13.8 SICHUAN-GANSU BORDER REGION, CHINA
5.8 2008/05/12 11:11:02 31.249 103.693 10.0 EASTERN SICHUAN, CHINA
5.1 2008/05/12 10:23:40 30.992 103.413 10.0 EASTERN SICHUAN, CHINA
5.5 2008/05/12 09:42:25 31.519 104.116 10.0 EASTERN SICHUAN, CHINA
5.1 2008/05/12 09:07:01 31.255 103.788 10.0 EASTERN SICHUAN, CHINA
5.0 2008/05/12 08:47:25 32.215 105.029 10.0 SICHUAN-GANSU BORDER REGION, CHINA
5.2 2008/05/12 08:21:41 31.542 104.085 10.0 EASTERN SICHUAN, CHINA
5.2 2008/05/12 08:10:59 31.225 103.574 10.0 EASTERN SICHUAN, CHINA
5.4 2008/05/12 07:34:43 31.278 103.799 10.0 EASTERN SICHUAN, CHINA
5.7 2008/05/12 06:54:18 31.155 103.826 10.0 EASTERN SICHUAN, CHINA
6.0 2008/05/12 06:43:15 31.225 103.761 10.0 EASTERN SICHUAN, CHINA
7.9 2008/05/12 06:28:00 31.021 103.367 10.0 EASTERN SICHUAN, CHINA
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/quakes_big.php