It's an asymmetric world

(I am writing this mainly so our friends - mine and my wife's - outside Perú can rest assured that we are OK after the earthquake)

We've had an earthquake today. Actually we had a big one of magnitude 7.9 Richter scale (lasted almost 2 minutes), and several others from 5.0 to 5.9, mostly on the coast of Peru (there haven been 140+ aftershocks). The 7.9 quake was not too far from Lima where I live (the epicenter was about 150 km SSE from here) and has been the strongest one I've livd through for quite some time (I remember another one in the 70's when I was a kid). Fortunately everyone I care about is OK: my wife, my parents and sister, and my in-laws.

I've had just gotten home and planned on playing some games on my old PS2, then go to do some shopping (it was my turn to cook), when suddenly everything started shaking, and because we usually got quakes here, I expected this to stop, but it continued and started to increase in intesity, so I went around the apartment trying to put breakables on the ground or somewhere they could not fall, all the while trying to call my wife on the cell phone. The phone lines (cell and land lines) were overwhelmed and could not get to her. Fortunately after it all was finished, I could call her and she was OK. That was the best news of the day for me.

We are watching the news, and some places have suffered collapsed building, walls, and even small fires. The stats mentioned a minute ago mention 40+ dead and 400+ injured so far just in Ica (00:32 2007/06/16, TZ: America/Lima) [Update 2007/08/16: reports put the numbers at 387 dead and 1050 injured now]. People in Ica and whereabouts (a city closer to the epicenter) seems to be in worse shape than anyone else. Some hospitals have collapsed and the rest are full. Health workers, make-shift hospitals and other needed help is being sent right now to that region.

As I was writing this, at least 2 aftershocks have rocked our apartment. Just in case we have prepared a backpack with some water, food and clothing. Hopefully the aftershocks will not be so bad that we would need to get off the building.

In case you want see some more info, check out the info at the USGS site about the latest quakes, there you will also find info on the 7.9 earthquake

To all the friends who have phoned, emailed, skyped, etc. Thanks from Airin and myself.

[Update: August 16, 2007]

• The magnitude of the strongest earthquake has been revised to 8.0 (Richter scale).
• Here is a list of the earthquakes (with magnitude > 5.0) listed at the USGS site as happening in Perú (see also their location on the map ):
  

  Magnitude (UTC date and time)	(Long, Lat), Depth [Km]	Info at USGS
  8.0 (2007/08/15 23:40:57)	(-13.358, -76.522), 30.2	Summary
  5.6 (2007/08/16 00:02:40)	(-13.235, -76.400), 26.6	Summary
  5.8 (2007/08/16 00:19:14)	(-14.218, -76.081), 35.0	Summary
  5.8 (2007/08/16 01:02:23)	(-13.307, -76.486), 30.5	Summary
  5.4 (2007/08/16 01:35:40)	(-14.086, -76.546), 35.0	Summary
  5.0 (2007/08/16 02:17:10)	(-13.615, -75.922), 37.4	Summary
  5.0 (2007/08/16 02:54:20)	(-13.486, -76.516), 35.0	Summary
  5.6 (2007/08/16 04:04:10)	(-13.585, -76.533), 35.0	Summary
  5.0 (2007/08/16 04:16:48)	(-13.338, -76.874), 14.7	Summary
  5.2 (2007/08/16 04:23:19)	(-13.518, -75.725), 28.7	Summary
  6.3 (2007/08/16 05:16:58)	(-14.250, -76.061), 35.0	Summary
  5.0 (2007/08/16 06:10:46)	(-14.095, -76.735), 35.0	Summary
  5.3 (2007/08/16 09:43:53)	(-14.009, -75.984), 35.0	Summary
  6.0 (2007/08/16 11:35:30)	(-14.395, -76.154), 35.0	Summary