The death toll is at 420 from Friday's 7.5 quake in Palu, Indonesia but officials are reporting it more likely will be in the thousands. It has also come out that the issued tsunami warning was cancelled just before the waves started coming ashore. Palu's location, at the end of a bay in a little notch on the western Sulawesi coast, is thought to have amplified the effects of the waves (and I keep saying waveS, because tsunamis are not one wave but a surge of wave after wave caused by the length of time and continuous shaking in a quake lasting minutes- each new shake and the sea floor ripples again, sending forth more water). Damage reports are slow to come in from Donggala, a nearby city of 300,000 because the access bridge was washed out during by the surging waves (likely with some preliminary damage from the quake itself).
This is the second quake/tsunami in little over a month for Indonesia, but for an island arc nation formed of volcanoes caused by the collision of 3 different plates, why are tsunamis a surprise? They should not be and everyone sure felt the quake, why not prepare for a tsunami, warning or not. Still, when a warning is cancelled...bad move! Sorry Indonesians.
A 6.6 quake in Fiji topped today's list, no tsunami warning with that quake. Aftershocks continue in the Palu region, and after a 7.5 quake it will take Earth awhile to adjust to just released tensions.
Here in the Old Dominion, Sunday is lovely, a cloudy, dewy start but the clouds are gone and it's the crisp, dry air of an early fall day and shake free, get out and enjoy, Today on Earth.
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