Wednesday, August 24, 2011
UPDATE: Quake Said To Be Strongest Since 1897
Mineral, VA - The magnitude 5.8 earthquake that struck Virginia on Tuesday was the largest on the East Coast since one of the same strength in New York in 1944, according to the U.S. Geological Service.
It was the largest in Virginia since a 5.9 temblor in 1897. The largest East Coast quake on record was a 7.3 in South Carolina in 1886.
A 5.8 earthquake releases as much energy as nearly 8 tons of TNT, about half the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
But it was smaller than earthquakes that have made world headlines recently. The devastating March 11 quake in northeastern Japan was a magnitude 9.0. One that rocked Christchurch, New Zealand, in February was a 6.3.
That Japanese earthquake released 63,095 times more energy than the Virginia one.
USGS seismologist Paule Earle said earthquakes like this can happen “anywhere at any time.”
“There’s a lot of unknown faults in the East that are very unlikely to go, but do go periodically,” Earle said.
Advertisement:
The epicenter of Tuesday’s quake was 3.7 miles underground near Mineral, Va., and about 90 miles southwest of Washington.
There were no immediate reports of deaths, but fire officials in Washington said there were at least some injuries. The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake registered at magnitude 5.8 and was centered about 40 miles northwest of Richmond, Va.
Two nuclear reactors at the North Anna Power Station, in the same county as the epicenter, were automatically taken off line by safety systems, said Roger Hannah, a spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The earthquake came less than three weeks before the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, and in both Washington and New York it immediately triggered fears of something more sinister than a natural disaster.
At the Pentagon, a low rumbling built until the building itself was shaking, and people ran into the corridors of the complex. The shaking continued there, to shouts of “Evacuate! Evacuate!”
The Park Service closed all monuments and memorials on the National Mall, and ceiling tiles fell at Reagan National Airport outside Washington. All flights there were put on hold.
In lower Manhattan, the 26-story federal courthouse in lower Manhattan, blocks from ground zero of the Sept. 11 attacks, began swaying, and hundreds of people streamed out of the building.
Shaking was felt as far south as Charleston, S.C., and as far north and east as Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., where President Barack Obama is taking summer vacation and was starting a round of golf when the quake struck at 1:51 p.m. EDT.
A magnitude of 5.8 would make the quake among the most powerful to strike the eastern United States. In 1897, a magnitude-5.9 quake was recorded at Giles County, Va., the largest on record in that state.
East Coast earthquakes are far less common than in the West, but they tend to be felt over a broad area.
“The waves are able to reverberate and travel pretty happily out for miles,” said U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Susan Hough.
Amtrak said its trains along the Northeast Corridor between Baltimore and Washington were operating at reduced speeds and crews were inspecting stations and railroad infrastructure before returning to normal.
More than 12 million people live close enough to the quake’s epicenter to have felt shaking, according to the Geological Survey. The agency said put the quake in its yellow alert category, meaning there was potential for local damage but relatively little economic damage.
The Virginia quake came a day after an earthquake in Colorado toppled groceries off shelves and caused minor damage to homes in the southern part of the state and in northern New Mexico. No injuries were reported as aftershocks continued Tuesday.
In Charleston, W.Va., hundreds of workers left the state Capitol building and employees at other downtown office buildings were asked to leave temporarily.
“The whole building shook,” said Jennifer Bundy, a spokeswoman for the state Supreme Court. “You could feel two different shakes. Everybody just kind of came out on their own.”
In Ohio, where office buildings swayed in Columbus and Cincinnati and the press box at the Cleveland Indians’ Progressive Field shook. At least one building near the Statehouse was evacuated in downtown Columbus.
In downtown Baltimore, the quake sent office workers into the streets, where lamp posts swayed slightly as they called family and friends to check in.
Social media site Twitter lit up with reports of the earthquake from people using the site up and down the U.S. eastern seaboard.
“People pouring out of buildings and onto the sidewalks and Into Farragut Park in downtown DC…,” tweeted Republican strategist Kevin Madden.
John Gurlach, air traffic controller at the Morgantown Municipal Airport was in a 40-foot-tall tower when the earth trembled.
“There were two of us looking at each other saying, ‘What’s that?’” he said, even as a commuter plane was landing. “It was noticeably shaking. It felt like a B-52 unloading.”
Immediately, the phone rang from the nearest airport in Clarksburg, and a computer began spitting out green strips of paper — alerts from other airports in New York and Washington issuing ground stops “due to earthquake.”
hostgator coupon 2011
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Get ready for September
There is so much news so fast that I think is better take a moment and put it in perspective of what is coming on September:
10 years of the New york attacks on September 11
Elenin have its shortest distance to the sun September 11
Days of rage on Wall street on September 17
UN will Vote on Palestinian state September 20
Feast of Trumpets September 28 and 29 (you know it could have a Rapture implications)
Elenin,Mercury,Sun and earth alignment on September 28 possible eclipse because Elenin will block the Sun.
Comet Levy will come to earth on the other side on September 28
EAS Emergency Alert System deadline to install equipments in all states on September 30
It is unclear if NASA elenin to the planet x but according to private astronomers they have the same path.
Its estimated that the coma of the Planet x (elenin) is about 200,000 kms of diameter that means 15 times earth diameter, and it's not a comet, it is a Brown dwarf
Attached pictures of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA (JPL) and stressed
some points about Elenin.
Here is the link to the JPL where you can manipulate by date and position:
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=elenin;orb=1;cov=1;log=0;cad=1#cad
If Planet X is Elenin according to NASA, see where it was when it was theJapan earthquake:
Elenin was align with the earth, sun, mercury on March 11.... it is believed that the magnetic pole is so strong that produced the earthquake.
Elenin it's going to be to the closest point with the earth on October 16
Elenin it's going to be to the closest point with the earth on September 11
Elenin it's going to be align with the mercury, sun, Elenin, and earth on September 28 FEAST OF TRUMPETS and a possible ECLIPSE because of Elenin
Comet Levy coming from the south east of the earth on trumpets
On Yom Kippur Elenin
Yom Kippur Levy
Comet 2005 YU55 Is on collision course with the earth for NOV 8, can you read the earth name on the picture?
Remember this is from NASA... it's going to be at the double of the distance as we are from moon
No matter how big this thing is, we must not fear because our GOD is bigger.
If you live in holiness he is with you!!!
2 Samuel 22:32
King James Version (KJV)
32For who is God, save the LORD? and who is a rock, save our God?
In jesus
Luis
hostgator coupon 2011
U.S. a food stamp nation
NEW YORK – Genna Saucedo supervises cashiers at a Wal-Mart in Pico Rivera, California, but her wages aren’t enough to feed herself and her 12-year-old son.
Ms. Saucedo, who earns US$9.70 an hour for about 26 hours a week and lives with her mother, is one of the many Americans who survive because of government handouts in what has rapidly become a food stamp nation.
Altogether, there are now almost 46 million people in the United States on food stamps, roughly 15% of the population. That’s an increase of 74% since 2007, just before the financial crisis and a deep recession led to mass job losses.
At the same time, the cost doubled to reach US$68-billion in 2010 — more than a third of the amount the U.S. government received in corporate income tax last year — which means the program has started to attract the attention of some Republican lawmakers looking for ways to cut the nation’s budget deficit.
While there are clearly some cases of abuse by people who claim food stamps but don’t really need them, for many Americans like Saucedo there is little current alternative if they are to put food on the table while paying rent and utility bills.
“It’s kind of sad that even though I’m working that I need to have government assistance. I have asked them to please put me on full-time so I can have benefits,” said the 32-year-old.
She’s worked at Wal-Mart for nine months, and applied for food stamps as soon as her probation ended. She said plenty of her colleagues are in the same situation.
So are her customers. Bill Simon, head of Wal-Mart’s U.S. operations, told a conference call last Tuesday that the company had seen an increase in the number of shoppers relying on government assistance for food.
About forty percent of food stamp recipients are, like Ms. Saucedo, in households in which at least one member of the family earns wages. Many more could be eligible: the government estimates one in three who could be on the program are not.
“If they’re working, they often think they can’t get help. But people can’t support their families on $10, $11, $12 an hour jobs, especially when you add transport, clothes, rent.” said Carolyn McLaughlin, executive director of BronxWorks, a social services organization in New York.
The maximum amount a family of four can receive in food stamps is US$668 a month. They can only be used to buy food — though not hot food — and for plants and seeds to grow food.
Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama all made efforts to raise awareness about the program and remove the stigma associated with it.
In 2004, paper coupons were replaced with cards similar to debit cards onto which benefits can be loaded. In 2008 they were renamed Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits though most people still call them food stamps.
Despite the bipartisan support for the program in the past, some of the recent political rhetoric has food stamp advocates worried.
Presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich last year derided Democrats as “the party of food stamps.” And Republican leaders in the House of Representatives propose changing the program so that the funding is through a “block grant” to the states, rather than allowing it to grow automatically when needed due to an emergency, such as a natural disaster or economic crisis.
In some parts of the country, shoppers using food stamps have almost become the norm. In May 2011, a third of all people in Alabama were on food stamps — though part of that was because of emergency assistance after communities were destroyed by a series of destructive tornadoes. Washington D.C., Mississippi, New Mexico, Oregon and Tennessee all had about a fifth of their population on food stamps that month.
“Food stamps have traditionally been insulated from politics,” said Parke Wilde, professor of U.S. food policy at Tufts University. “But as you look over the current fiscally conservative proposals, the question is, has something fundamentally changed?”
A LOW WAGE SUPPORT PROGRAM
Over the past 20 years, the characteristics of the program’s recipients have changed. In 1989, a higher percentage were on benefits than working, but as of 2009 a higher percentage had earned income.
“SNAP is increasingly work support,” said Ed Bolen, an analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
And that’s only likely to get worse: So far in the recovery, jobs growth has been concentrated in lower-wage occupations, with minimal growth in middle-income wages as many higher-paid blue collar jobs have disappeared.
And 6% of the 72.9 million Americans paid by the hour received wages at or below the federal minimum wage of US$7.25 an hour in 2010. That’s up from 4.9% in 2009, and 3% in 2002, according to government data.
Mr. Bolen said just based on income, minimum wage single parents are almost always eligible for food stamps.
“This becomes an implicit subsidy for low-wage jobs and in terms of incentives for higher wage job creation that really is not a good thing,” said Arindrajit Dube, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, whose research shows raising the minimum wage would spur economic activity.
Until a couple of weeks ago Tashawna Green, 21, from Queens Village, New York, worked 25 hours a week at an US$8.08 hourly rate at retailer Target. She is on food stamps, and says a good number of her former colleagues are too.
“It’s a good thing that the government helps, but if employers paid enough and gave enough hours, then we wouldn’t need to be on food stamps,” said Ms. Green, who has a six-year-old daughter.
Of course, with an unemployment rate over 9%, some argue that those with any job at all are lucky.
Millions of Americans whose unemployment benefits have expired have to exist only on food stamps and other government aid, such as Medicaid healthcare support.
And even with unemployment benefits, said Jessica King, 25, from Portland, Oregon, her family juggles bills to ensure the electricity stays on. They are also selling some belongings on Craigslist to raise funds.
Ms. King’s husband Stephen, 30, an electronics assembly worker, lost his job two months ago when she was seven months pregnant with their second child. It was the third time he has been laid off since 2008.
She said she was reluctant, initially, to go on food stamps.
“I felt the way our national debt was going I didn’t want to be part of the problem,” said Ms. King, who used to work as a cook at a faith-based non-profit organization.
“But I didn’t know what else to do and I got to a point where I swallowed my pride and decided to do what was best for my daughter.”
Financial Post
hostgator coupon 2011
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)