Wednesday, August 24, 2011

The Great Virginia Earthquake of 2011




Personally, I prefer the Turkish word for eathquake which is 'deprem.' My late father's country has had a number of devastating shakers, including one in the eastenr city of Erzincan in the 1960s and more recently a series of massive quakes in wetern Turkey, including a 1999 deprem which put Istanbul and surrounding areas into chaos.

Yesterday's 5.9 earthquake centered around the small town of Mineral, Va., which is between Richmond and Charlottesville, did create some problems for those around the epicentet. Various sources said that residents of Mineral felt the tremor for up to 40 seconds.

Diane Miller who works at the local Louisa County Animal Shelter told NPR that the cats were hiding in their litter boxes. And, at least one florist shop in the area received major damage to inventory.

The often-hilarious liberal talk show host Keith Olbermann gave a stirring commentary during his show on Current TV last night when he pointed that the earthquake occured in the district of Cong. Eric Cantor (R-Va.).

Cantor, who is the majority leader on the Hill and a member of Congress known for being uncompromising and arch conservative, had argued that federal funding for the United States Geological Survey needed to be cut. So, Olbermann was thus able to make him an easy target for ripe political humor.

But, much of the chat about the quake which I felt in North Carolina for 10-12 seconds some four hours from the epicenter has come to an abrupt halt on the Internet.

Though a tweet from WashDCNews asked the following question: "How could Virginia-quake be felt in Canada and crack the Washington Monument?"

The answer is apparently that there is a vast geological different between fault lines in Virginia and those in California.

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