The dry earth continued to thrive and vibrate in the remote south of Guyana on a scorching Sunday afternoon, but across the Atlantic, it was just after 8 pm and freezing, when a top scientific center in Germany reported the rare earthquake in officially, minutes later.
A monitoring station, the closest, over the border in the Pitinga tin mining zone, Brazil, detected a moderate magnitude 5.6 earthquake of January 316 and struck at 3:05 pm, as seismic waves radiated from the shallow 13-kilometer basin. a epicenter in the Rupununi, sending frightened villagers scrambling, sparking national surprise and disbelief, and encouraging a chain of quick responses from similar listening sites in South America and beyond. Brazilians fled the baffle of their breathtaking and rocking complexes in Manaus, racing down flights of stairs and waiting in the streets until the shaking subsided.
In the modern history of this country, this is likely our major locally and naturally confirmed seismic event. Up to yesterday, there were at least ten aftershocks, ranging in size from 2.9 to 3.9, with more expected over weeks, months and even years. The Rupununi earthquake was recalculated by the experts as they studied the flow of incoming information, from 6.0 to 5.9, and finally 5.6 in magnitude, with the epicenter also corrected 1.1 km or 0.7 miles to the south.
Some 1200 stations from nearly 100 seismic networks around the world, help entities such as the GFZ German Geosciences Research Center keep an accurate daily view of the planet’s ever-disturbing dynamic, from the baby burp just as a sudden day event Sunday, to murderous and mega explosions. -quakes. Using invaluable data from global partners, the Center produces dozens of event venues, through its GEOFON program.
Yet Potsdam, the bustling capital and largest city of the German province of Brandenburg, could be no different than the rolling, sparsely populated savannahs, bird-rich wetlands, dense forests and the low mountains of Guyana’s stunning, rich Nine Region ( Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo).
Derived from the word “rapon” in the Makushi language, for the black bells whistling duck found along the meandering river, the Rupununi covers nearly 60 000 square kilometers and has over 80 communities, mainly in the savannah area, including the Dadanawa cattle ranch. , the country’s largest and most isolated.
The section affected by the earthquake includes small indigenous agricultural villages such as Sawariwi, which derives from the term “Shawarowaoro” which means “The Grandfather Spirit of Fishes” in the Pawi shian language, in according to the website wapichanao.communitylands.org. It is said to be the oldest settlement of the Wapichan people in South Rupununi, it was founded in the mid-18th century and is about 70 miles south of the famous border town of Lethem and 21 miles east of the Brazilian border of the Takutu River. .
A former satellite, Katoonarib, in the Middle South, shortened from “Katoonaru Iribi” or “Bush Island” is set at only 68 square miles, but there are titles to these lands in an ancient ancient homeland called “Wapichan wiizi,” yet to be given by the Government to the tribes of the original inhabitants of Guyana, or First Peoples.
This week, the Civil Defense Commission scrambled to map the remote location, near the epicenter, but in assessments by the Regional Disaster Response team on Monday, only two traditional homes were built sustainably from adobe or mud blocks dry, with a woven trolley leaf. -ofofs were obviously damaged. Viral photographs by resident Karlos Kroft showed collapsed walls, and a few cracked earth surfaces, as a continuous test of our incredible good fortune and incredibly lucky geology.
“While the team was on the ground, loud noises were heard about three times from different directions around the communities. There are no reports of loss of people’s lives. Residents reported that this sound (also) was heard years ago, and felt like the ‘movement’ of the earth, ”the Commission contacted in a social media post.
Sometimes small shallow earthquakes produce these interesting effects or sonic booms that can be heard by people very close to them. High frequency vibrations from shallow earthquakes produce such sounds; when earthquakes are deeper, the vibrations never reach the surface, the US Geological Survey (USGS) advised.
Reports of unknown “boils” have emerged from various places around the world for centuries, and while many stories remain mysterious, others were due to human activity, the Survey said.
Improvements in communication and the growing interest in natural disasters mean that the public is now learning about earthquakes faster than ever before. On average, earthquakes of magnitude 2 and smaller occur hundreds of times a day worldwide, with the actual mega-disasters, of magnitude 8 and above, about once a year. The US National Earthquake Information Center locates about 20,000 earthquakes worldwide annually, or about 55 a day. The old Richter measuring scale, usually numbered 1-10, is logarithmic so an earthquake of magnitude 5 is ten times more powerful than an earthquake measuring 4. For every step up in magnitude an earthquake releases 30 times more energy. Scientists are now using the Magnitude Moment Scale based on the same logarithmic scale but which better measures the strength of larger earthquakes.
But we are far away from the seismic Fire Rings that mark the shifting tectonic plates that distinguish our continuously functioning planet. The ancient geological craton on which Southern Guyana and its sister states rest, called the Guiana Shield acts as a continuous protective barrier against earthquakes.
At about 1.3 billion years, the giant craton is an early, thankfully small, continental lithosphere of the young Earth, consisting of the two upper layers, the crust and the upper mantle. The oldest kernel of South America, it is divided by the Amazon drainage basin into two parts, a resource-rich Guiana Shield in the north, and the Guaporé or Brazilian Central Shield in the south.
Professor George Sand de França, of the University of Brasilia’s Seismological Observatory, told the media house g1.Globo.com that the earthquake was caused by a geological fault. Failures are fractures of the crust that are under pressure and can move. “In this region there is a mapped failure zone called the Rio Branco Failure Zone, which can be a favorable region for removal” he explained.
“This movement is small compared to the movement of the plate boundaries, but enough to produce earthquakes of this magnitude. This tremor was very strong and can reach a radius felt at a distance of 300 km, ”he added.
Business administrator Leonardo Rangel, 29, was with his wife in their 16th floor condominium apartment in the Manx Zone of the South Center. At about 3:15 pm, they felt the tremor.
“I was on the couch and I felt dizzy. I thought I was feeling sick. I looked at the chandelier and saw that it was rocking a lot, ”Mr Rangel told the TV station.
The structure was rocking. “We ran down. We couldn’t get a mask, we even went barefoot. The recommendation was not to use the lift, we had to go downstairs. It was a panic, ”he said.
VolcanoDiscovery.com received over 200 reports from affected Guyanese and Brazilians. Presentations included this one from Kwakwani Park, Region 10 (Upper Demerara-Berbice): “I thought something was wrong with me. Until my partner asked if I felt the house shaking, that was when I realized it wasn’t my nerve. “
ID is trying not to get nervous over the VolcanoDiscovery reveal that our own Rupununi earthquake produced the estimated combined seismic energy of 4.46 gigawatt hours, equivalent to 3835 tons of TNT or 0.2 atomic bombs!