San Francisco Earthquakes, USGS Coverup?
October 20, 2011, Submitted by: Ken Tweet
Today, the San Francisco Bay Area shook with two decent size earthquakes in the magnitude 4 range on the Hayward fault. Two quakes of this magnitude in one day is unheard of.
Having experienced both of these earthquakes myself today (I happen to live only a handful of miles away from today’s epicenter), and having more than a decade of earthquake experience in this geographical area, the 2nd earthquake today felt without a doubt stronger than the first, while at the same time they (the USGS) immediately downgraded the 2nd quake from a 4.2 to a 3.9, then to a 3.8! No way! I’ve felt enough 3 and 4-range quakes to know what these feel like. This 2nd one today really shook the place strongly.
I wonder if ‘they’ do not wish to alarm the populace that this 2nd quake is stronger than the first, and therefore is not an aftershock but possibly another fore-shock? You see, aftershocks are smaller than the initial quake, and additionally also begin to occur almost immediately after the initial quake. Today, the 2nd, seemingly larger quake came nearly 6 hours later. Seems suspicious.
This time it seems so obvious to me that there may be some conspiracy going on over at USGS. I hate to say it, because I’m not a conspiracy nut. However there is all sorts of history regarding government ‘officials’ not wanting to alarm the public one way or another, so, why should this be any different… ?
While watching the live TV news coverage after the event, as they continue to interview lots of people on the air, nearly every single one of them have said that they are amazed and astounded at the magnitude reported now by the USGS. The people saying this are mostly experienced long-time residents of earthquake country…
I have just lost nearly all credibility of the USGS, and the methodology that they are using to measure quakes today. How is it that they ALWAYS (90% of the time) downgrade a quake? Why not mix some upgrades with the downgrades – over the years on average? It’s always down… That tells me that either their measuring equipment or methodology is entirely faulty, or there is a deliberate intention to downgrade quakes. I believe now that it may be deliberate. They are a government organization after all, who answers up the chain of command. Think about it.
All I can say is that I’m glad I’m moving out of this area within a few months!
Update,
I dug up a few waveforms of the two quakes, as shown below for simple non-scientific comparison (C043 NC HNZ, C033 NC HNZ). USGS says Quake-2 was weaker than Quake-1.
In addition, to put the USGS initial reporting ‘error’ into perspective, in the particular case of Quake-2, they initially rated it magnitude 4.2, then downgraded to 3.8, which is a difference in strength of 2.5 times! In other words, their error was 250%. (Note, it’s a logarithmic scale, e.g. a magnitude 5 is 10x stronger than a magnitude 4)
Seems like their computer algorithms are a bit off-the-mark.
Update, October 27, 2011
Yet another earthquake rattled the Bay Area originating from the Hayward Fault in the East Bay, again not too far from where I currently live. This time, around 5:30 in the morning, I had just sat down with my morning coffee and turned on the laptop, then …Bang-Jolt ~~followed by shaking for about 8 seconds. Sure got the heart pumping. I popped on the TV, minutes later the initial report was a magnitude 3.9. Then, wouldn’t you know it, about 15 minutes later it was downgraded to a 3.6. What’s up with that?
This State sure has been shaking lately. Last night a 4.7 up near Truckee. Oh, by the way, that earthquake was initially a 5.2, then downgraded to a 4.7. Downgraded by the USGS? Really? (insert sarcasm …shocking)
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People are panicky creatures. They would do more harm to each other and themselves trying to get out of the way then any earthquake would cause them.
First, I agree that the new method of sticking a number on a quake has too many “soft science” parameters. How much damage was caused depends entirely on the actual location. City or country? On shore or off? What we ought to get is the pure physical strength of the quake at the surface/seabed. That gives those of us looking at groups of quakes a better grasp of the energy involved.
Second, The USGS can’t make predictions. Their crystal ball isn’t in working order yet. The unpredictability is one of the unsavory thing we just have to accept. At this point. One hopes that our ability to predict earthquakes will improve, but it isn’t anywhere close to, say hurricane predictions, that can evacuate entire cities ahead of diaster.
Probably they are downgrading because their automatic annotation usually just sets them too high? I see this regulary with quakes in Iceland, which are ways more often downgraded than upgraded (which happens also). And why should they bother to falsify data when they could simply take the complete stuff from the web? For public safety reasons or something like that, I guess some spin doctor would have a nice explanation? Did you wrote to USGS and simply asked them, why they act in the way they do?
The “feel” of each earthquake is always going to different. In those two earthquakes, the depth and location was slightly different. The difference for you may have been that you were slightly closer to the second epicenter. The nature of the slippage also affects the “feel” of each earthquake. Waves travel differently through broken rocks/plates.
Everything about how the earthquake feels to you depends upon what is beneath you, the way the earth is shifting, the depth of the earthquake, and your location in reference to the epicenter, all of which change slightly for every earthquake.
To ALL. First of all the USGS set last week’s Oregon earthquake at 5.9 then downgraded it to a 5.3. This is like downgrading the energy of a near one megaton hydrogen bomb to that energy of a large atomic bomb about 75 kilotons. NO ONE WITH ANY SENSITIVE EQUIPMENT CAN MAKE AN ERROR OF THIS PROPORTION, NO FREAKING WAY. It use to be that earthquakes were maybe downgraded or changed .1 after a couple of weeks to refine what the size actually was. The difference now is that technology has improved a lot and the sizes are now more difficult to read. GIVE ME A BREAK!
To those that say that call these automatic systems that have to be adjusted that much, I have some nice moon property for sale at a penny an acre, just send your certified checks to ……….
All of those that doubt that the USGS is not up to something or the biggest bunch of incompetent flaming idiots that are, I suggest you look at the amounts of energy that are released in earthquakes and see just how much difference there is when you start downgrading an earthquake more than .2, it is tremendous. 5.9 to 5.3, NO WAY, the energy here is more than 10 times difference, NO WAY. Equipment now in the 21 st century is not that primitive that they cannot get an accurate reading right off the bat.
Another consideration is why are so many of these earthquakes that are downgraded are usually in areas of economic importance? Why are not ALL earthquakes changed from the initial readings?
I have a minor in Geology and I know the amounts of energy in earthquakes and unless the equipment at the USGS is pure crap or they are employing high school students to do these readings, these downgrades are pure crap. The crap that bakes all day long in the sun, flies and all.
The difference between a magnitude 5.9 and 5.3 is a whopping 4X, or, 400%! That’s huge.
It is unthinkable how they could be ‘off’ by that much in an initial estimation of magnitude. If these people were working for a ‘real’ company, they would be fired for gross ineptness. There is no excuse for errors of this magnitude, IMO.
Who knows what’s really going on but I’m pretty sure aftershocks can last for days (maybe even years) so a 6 hour delay is not unexpected. I also believe that aftershocks can be as bad in magnitude as the initial earthquake, and maybe even worse but I’m not positive. Like another commenter said it depends on the location and depth of the earthquake and aftershocks as they don’t necessarily happen in the same spots. Then again, maybe these intial quakes are really forequakes and the worst is coming!
A fairly good comparison to a 4.2 and 3.8 earthquake is to go fire off some bird shot and then a couple of nice rifled slugs in a shotgun and feel the difference. Or fire off some .25 caliber shells then some 9 mm shells and feel the difference. A very expensive and extremely sensitive seismograph should be able to immediately tell the differnce in energy. The amounts of energy between two numbers, say a 7 and 6 is about 32 times. So a 8 pointer releases about 1000 times the energy of a 6. The amount of energy released from a 4.2 is about the energy released in a small 3 kiloton atomic bomb. The amount of energy released in a 3.8 is about 350 tons of TNT. 3000 tons of TNT as opposed to 350 tons of TNT of energy released is huge.
The logarithmic scale of 10 they use for magnitudes is even more pronounced when you use the energy scale of 32 to determine the amount of energy released to see the huge differences in these so called readings. People need to feel the difference in the amount of energy and the kick back from different sized cabliers on their firearms to truly see the differences in these errors that the USGS is making, either on purpose, through faulty equipment, or their shear stupidity.
Another comparison would be hitting a solid object with your car at various speeds. I imagine that you could feel the difference between a 4.2 and a 3.8 as something similar to running into something with a little bit of give to it like a tree going 20 mph as opposed to maybe 10 mph. Those who have been in accidents know the feeling of greater speed and impacts. This is the same as energy going out from an earthquake, you can feel it. Why can’t these mega expensive seismographs feel it correctly at first? OH, the USGS smells of something, and it ain’t good.
I agree that the measurements seem off. why downgrade it EVERY time? Seems like all the equipment needs to be re calibrated or something.
But (at the moment) I doubt the conspiracy angle. All the earthquake sensors all over the world report in. Wouldn’t one of them (assuming not paid off or something) report the quake as stronger? Or maybe the problem isn’t with US calibration but those other calibrations around the world. when their reports come in (which were usually accurate until budget cuts in their countries stopped fixing??) saying it was lower then USGS changes it???? I don’t know…
how deep were the quakes? that makes all the difference in how big it feels.
It just doesn’t make logical sense that every time (75 – 95%?) there is an earthquake in a populated region, and the data is examined afterward by a ‘seismologist’, that the magnitude is downgraded. It simply defies the odds. That’s why I used the word ‘conspiracy’
I do believe it would also be beneficial to come up with an additional scale, one that measures the ‘feel’ of a quake on the surface, rather than just its overall power. As you said, it depends upon the depth and the geology of the surface itself (bedrock versus sand, etc.). The quakes yesterday were pretty close to the same depth if I remember correctly.
I live in San Francisco, directly across the Bay from Berkeley and the Hayward Fault.
In the mid-afternoon, PG&E came out to restore gas service after they claimed an emergency earthquake shut-off valve went off in the street, shutting off gas on our block – which they spent hours turning back on for some strange reason, claiming they were adjusting it so the sensitivity was not set up so high. We’ve never, in any previous earthquakes had this valve go off.
Then, after 8 pm in the evening, while in a different room, I heard a rumble like someone banging the roof or walls, not knowing what it was, but then later found a painting knocked off a shelf, where it was firmly sitting and had never in any previous earthquakes, not once, ever been thrown to the floor.
But the second one would have been stronger than the first one if it physically threw a painting to the floor – which the first one I had no idea it even happened, other than PG&E claiming they bumped off the earthquake emergency valve by themselves in the street earlier accidentally – which makes me wonder if they weren’t covering for the first earthquake too – by saying they bumped it off themselves accidentally, instead of blaming it on an actual earthquake.
Here in New Zealand, the Christchurch area is still feeling aftershocks from the devastating quakes in September and then the killer in February. The locals in Christchurch are becoming “magnitude experts” – after over 7,000 shakes, who wouldn’t?. Thankfully, I live around 1,000 Km away, and don’t feel any of them. All of these quakes are very shallow, which is what caused such deadly destruction. People feel the earthquakes very differently, depending on where in the area they are when it hits, but they are usually pretty close to the same estimates as out Geonet official figures.
Almost without exception, our local Geonet report the magnitudes as being larger than the USGS rating. Admittedly, USGS only report the larger tremors, but the discrepancy is pretty much universal – it’s as if the USGS system consistently rate the quakes smaller than the local systems.
I had always assumed this was a problem with their long-distance estimates or a different method of calculation, but if you are saying this happens even locally, then it puts a whole new picture on it…
Excuse me for changing the subject somewhat, but what’s with all those small earthquakes (about a dozen) on the Island of Hawaii the other day? Maybe a volcano?
I believe there is magma movement going on over there…
Update: There has just been an earthquake near the Kermadec Islands in the South Pacific, not too far from New Zealand. Local stats are (www.geonet.org.nz):
Reference Number 3598132
Universal Time October 21 2011 at 17:57
NZ Daylight Time Saturday, October 22 2011 at 6:57 am
Latitude, Longitude 29.20°S, 175.50°W
Focal Depth 16 km
Moment magnitude 7.3
Region NE of New Zealand
Location
230 km east of Raoul Island
310 km east of Macauley Island
900 km south of Nuku’alofa, Tonga
USGS are reporting the same quake as being 0.1 bigger:
Magnitude 7.4
Date-Time
Friday, October 21, 2011 at 17:57:16 UTC
Saturday, October 22, 2011 at 05:57:16 AM at epicenter
Location 28.998°S, 176.183°W
Depth 32.9 km (20.4 miles)
Region KERMADEC ISLANDS REGION
Distances 169 km (105 miles) E of Raoul Island, Kermadec Islands
375 km (233 miles) NE of L’Esperance Rock, Kermadec Islands
877 km (544 miles) S of NUKU`ALOFA, Tonga
1215 km (754 miles) NE of Auckland, New Zealand
Interesting that USGS are seeing it as larger – I will keep watch to see if either size estimates are revised. The Kermadecs are uninhabited, and there are 8 scientists on Raoul Island, so not exactly a population centre. NZ authorities are warning people in the Far North of New Zealand to watch for a possible small Tsunami (unlikely, but always a possibility).
Also interesting is that USGS are saying it is quite a bit deeper – not sure why the discrepancy – could this explain the difference in magnitude? (I’m no geologist)
The Kermadecs have been shaking for a while now – we have had a few Tsunami warnings from there recently, none of which reached NZ thankfully.
I will keep you posted.
@BlueGhost, Actually, USGS initially reported it as a 7.6, and they subsequently downgraded it. Typical…
I totally agree with your paranoia! I have seen and experienced evidence of this firsthand this year.
First, what about the swarm of Yellowstone quakes that erupted over a 48-hour period in February that were either completely removed or ridiculously downgraded, despite many, many people having captured screenshots of the quakes and/or actually feeling them? This is not the first time that the USGS has been caught removing or downgrading quakes in the Yellowstone area. Clearly this is a case of “don’t worry the people.” Google this for yourself or just do a search on Youtube.
Second, and this proved to me, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that the USGS is removing or downgrading quakes: the quake swarms on the NM/CO border in recent months. I live about 150-180 miles almost directly north of where those quakes took place, so about 25 miles or so south of Denver. The first “big one”, a 5-something at almost midnite, did not wake me. However, I was jolted out of bed at 5:30ish a.m. some hours later and my entire bed was shaking, along with the rest of my second floor bedroom. This lasted for about 5 seconds. However, it wasn’t the shaking that woke me, but rather the enormous booms that preceded it by a couple of seconds. It sounded like gunshots emanating from my basement; I even had my husband do a check of the house to make sure burglars weren’t there, but nothing except items knocked off of basement shelves and things rolled over in our garage. It wasn’t until I turned on the news did I see coverage of the quake from night before, yet no coverage on what I experienced at 5 a.m. In various comment sections of Denver newspapers and channels, multiple people commented on feeling that quake, one never listed by the usgs. A few weeks later, my husband and I experienced the “earthquake booms” again. The shaking rattled spaghetti jars in our pantry and set off a cascade of car alarms down our street. Nothing on the usgs until 3 hours later, yet they were reporting a quake from the same time we felt one, a 2 or 3-something almost 200 miles south of me, which was felt as far north as Jackson & Cheyenne, Wyoming. We felt a second jolt an hour later and that quake wasn’t even listed on the site. When I emailed the USGS asking them about the second quake, they told me that I probably just felt the one from earlier, but that was probably not what I felt if I didn’t feel the 3-something. How’s that for professionalism?
to me that sounds like someone was testing a bomb or something & it resulted in a quake or two. no reason to list non-natural quakes, right?
Pyramid Lake,Nevada is next in line for a major quake.Heads up!