Earthquake

A man sits on the sidewalk across from a multi-story building that has collapsed onto the street.

A building that has collapsed following the 7.7 and 7.6 magnitude earthquakes, in Hatay, Turkiye on February 9. (Photo by Erhan Demirtas/NurPhoto)

The rescue of a 2-year-old boy after 79 hours trapped in the rubble of a collapsed building in Hatay, Turkey, and several other people raised spirits among weary search crews. But hopes were fading that many more would be found alive in the ruins of towns and cities.

Danté Stewart 8-19-2021

A man searches the site of a collapsed hotel after Saturday's 7.2 magnitude quake, in Les Cayes, Haiti Aug. 16, 2021. REUTERS/Ricardo Arduengo

The earth quakes. It rumbles. It trembles, sort of like a roar, a shiver. I didn’t see it; I’ve never experienced it, but I heard the news. “1,900+ Haitians are believed to be dead,” the faint voice of the news reporter says over my car radio, “and hundreds are believed to be missing.”

Another headline reads: “The latest on Afghanistan as Taliban take charge.”

Another: “13-year-old Mississippi girl dies of COVID-19.”

A couple dressed up as a "Catrina and Catrin", a Mexican character also known as "The Elegant Death", kisses as they participate in a procession to commemorate Day of the Dead in Mexico City, Mexico, Oct. 28, 2017. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

Dancing devils, towering skeletons, and altars festooned with marigolds made their way down Mexico City's main thoroughfare on Saturday to commemorate Day of the Dead in a country still mourning nearly 500 people killed in earthquakes last month.

the Web Editors 9-22-2017

1. The Juggalo March Is Not a Joke

"What's unique about Juggalos is that they embrace and throw their class status in everyone's face—they’re flaunting their own disenfranchisement. ...They've recognized that the American dream is unattainable and made new dreams for themselves. That scares people. That scares the FBI. This is not what poor people are supposed to do."

the Web Editors 9-20-2017

Rescuers and people work at a collapsed building after an earthquake hit Mexico City. REUTERS/Henry Romero

“We pray for all those impacted by the devastating earthquake in Mexico. And we pray for those working tirelessly on rescue and recovery efforts. May God grant them strength and courage in the days and weeks ahead.”

Rescuers work at the site of a collapsed building after an earthquake in Mexico City, Mexico Sept. 20, 2017. REUTERS/Henry Romero
 

Desperate rescue workers scrabbled through rubble in a floodlit search on Wednesday for dozens of children feared buried beneath a Mexico City school, one of hundreds of buildings wrecked by the country's most lethal earthquake in a generation.

Image via RNS/Reuters/Remo Casilli

The strongest earthquake to strike Italy in more than three decades claimed no lives, but struck at the heart of the country’s vast religious and cultural heritage.

The Oct. 30 quake, which measured 6.6 magnitude according to the U.S. Geological Survey, was stronger than the one that killed almost 300 people on Aug. 24, and it struck a region already shaken by tremors last week.

Image via RNS/Reuters/Remo Casilli

Pope Francis expressed his “heartfelt sorrow” after a powerful earthquake killed at least 120 people and left a trail of destruction across central Italy. Hundreds of people were injured and dozens of others missing in several small towns after the magnitude-6.2 quake struck at 3:36 a.m. local time (Aug. 24). The quake’s epicenter was about 90 miles northeast of Rome, but the shock waves were felt from the southern city of Naples to the northern town of Rimini on the Adriatic Coast. A powerful aftershock of 5.4 magnitude followed an hour later.

the Web Editors 8-24-2016

Image via /Shutterstock

A 6.8 earthquake struck Myanmar on Aug. 24, reports the Wall Street Journal, the same day a deadly earthquake struck Italy. At least three people have died.

the Web Editors 8-24-2016

Image via /Shutterstock.com

Rescue efforts are underway to help people trapped or injured by the earthquake, which hit towns across central Italy, nearly 100 miles north of Rome and Vatican City. The quake is the deadliest for the country since a 2009 quake that hit L’Aquila and killed more than 300, also in central Italy. Rescuers are continuing to search for survivors.

Pope Francis, who was scheduled to give a speech to his general audience Wednesday, instead prayed with and for the people of Italy, reports Reuters.

Image via Julia Carrion/World Vision/RNS

Emergency teams from U.S. faith-based humanitarian relief agencies are on the ground in northwest Ecuador after the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that took the lives of at least 413 people. The April 16 quake destroyed more than 300 buildings, buckling overpasses and trapping drivers. More than 2,500 people were injured.

Image via Lokesh Todi.

Image via Lokesh Todi.

Lokesh Todi, born and raised in Kathmandu, moved home to Nepal nine months ago to be an entrepreneur. When the 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit last Saturday, he and a cousin started a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo to help connect concerned givers with local NGOs.

“We thought we could get some supplies to local groups. Our goal was to get $20,000 — that’s a lot of money in Nepal," said Todi, a recent graduate of Yale University's M.B.A program.

Thanks to their concerned networks, including thousands of shares from Todi’s Facebook page, the campaign has now raised $120,150 — more than six times the amount they expected. 

“I’m really hoping to make sure that all this money goes to right channels, and make sure that every dollar is spent properly and wisely. My goal is to help the community build back stronger and a little bit more prepared,” said Todi.

Photo via Vishal Arora / RNS

A volunteer stands in front of a collapsed temple at the Swayambhunath temple complex in Nepal. Photo via Vishal Arora / RNS

About 80 percent of Nepalese are Hindu, making Nepal the second-largest Hindu nation outside of India, with about 2 percent of the global total. Most Hindus believe in a kind of fatalism, and many here seemed unrattled by the quake as a test of faith, even as their temples and shrines were flattened.

“God had predestined it. He knew about it,” said Suresh Shrestha, a Hindu and a hotel owner. His house was partially damaged and he is living in a tent on the Tundikhel ground in Kathmandu.

Akriti Mahajan, a young girl who was standing outside her family’s tent nearby, suspects that man-made climate change had something to do with it.

“Humans are behind it,” she said. “If God had a role, this wouldn’t have happened.”

The Editors 1-14-2015

In 2014, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) premiered Water Everlasting? The Battle to Secure Haiti’s Most Essential Resource, a documentary film addressing concerns about Haiti’s public water system.

Government agencies and charitable organizations have spent decades attempting to provide clean water to Haiti, but administrative weaknesses often impede these efforts. The 2010 earthquake exacerbated the problem. Suddenly, millions of people lacked access to safe drinking water, and waterborne diseases reached epic proportions.

Yet, despite the many instances of lack, there is good being done in Haiti in various capacities. Read “On a Firm Foundation” to learn of the many positive accomplishments of Haitians working in their own neighborhoods. 

Jim Rice 1-05-2015

Photo: Chuck Bigger

HILDA DE BOJORQUEZ holds a set of blueprints in one hand. Her other hand is pointing. At a better future, perhaps, if things go well.

De Bojorquez is the chief engineer at this construction site in a neighborhood just outside Port-au-Prince still blemished with rubble from Haiti’s 2010 earthquake. She commands respect from the all-male crew of Haitians working at the site—she tells a group of visiting U.S. reporters that her gender has never been an issue in the male-dominated world of construction, here or in her native El Salvador.

When asked about obstacles on the project, De Bojorquez goes on for 15 minutes—she’s an engineer, after all—but the point is that they’ve tackled them, one by one, and done so the right way. She extols the importance of a solid foundation and robust retaining walls. She points to the cinder blocks and the rebar, and explains how her group had to teach a company how to provide high-quality materials, with the promise that they’d buy everything the company made. And she emphasizes that she’s there not just to oversee a number of construction projects, but to train Haitians to do it themselves the next time—and to do it right.

The steel-reinforced blocks are rising into walls that will surround a new six-room school for perhaps 200 children in this neighborhood four miles east of Port-au-Prince. The narrow site is wedged between two crumbling buildings, both showing earthquake damage. Even to an untrained eye, the differences are obvious between the fragile, deteriorating blocks next door and the solid retaining walls rising at our feet.

Andrew Suderman 3-22-2013

Jesus' arrival, writes Suderman, "shook the very foundations of society." Photo courtesy shutterstock.com

This past week I had an opportunity to teach an intensive course on the book of Matthew. I enjoy these opportunities, not only to teach, but to look at and present a book from start to finish. Although it is not possible to delve into every detail found within the book, following the plot line from start to finish helps to pick up on themes and recurring events and/or elements that accentuate and highlight certain points throughout the broader story. It is easy to miss such connections when snippets and bits and pieces are read rather than reading the whole story from beginning to end.

One such theme is how unsettling — literally — the person of Jesus was. Throughout Matthew’s gospel we hear how Jesus shook the foundations of society.

The Editors 3-18-2013

Three years after the 2010 earthquake devastated Haiti, the impoverished island nation is still struggling to rebuild. The ruins include Notre Dame de l’Assomption, Port-au-Prince’s renowned cathedral.

Hope abounds, however, as the capital city seeks to reconstruct this sacred place of worship. Edwidge Danticat’s “House of Prayer and Dreams,” in the April 2013 issue of Sojourners magazine, beautifully illustrates why the cathedral is central to the city’s past, present, and future.

Edwidge Danticat 3-14-2013

A rendering of the reconstructed cathedral.

WE WERE LOOKING at cathedrals while others were mourning and burying their dead.

It was the first day of the international design competition that would help choose a few architectural plans that might be used to rebuild Notre Dame de l'Assomption, Our Lady of the Assumption, Port-au-Prince's most famous cathedral. This cathedral was so central to the city that, before it was leveled in the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake, its turrets could be seen from most places in Port-au-Prince, as well as from the sea, where mariners used a light on the cupola of the church's north tower to help bring their ships home.

During the 2010 earthquake, the Catholic archbishop of Port-au-Prince, Monsignor Joseph Serge Miot, was killed inside an administrative building adjoining the cathedral, along with priests and parishioners. It was the images of their crushed bodies and their loved ones wailing around the perimeters of the cathedral's rubble that motivated me, a non-architect and non-Catholic—but a lover of cathedrals—to agree to join a development strategist, a preservationist architect, a structural engineer, a priest and liturgical consultant, the dean and associate dean of two architectural schools, and the editor of a magazine that discusses the dual issues of faith and architecture to help select three out of the 134 moving, elegant, and in some cases totally out-there designs that we had received from architects all over the world. Among the panelists, three of us were Haitian born, and many of the others had either worked in Haiti or in the Catholic Church for years.

The selection exercise itself was one that mirrored faith, blind faith. We were looking at sketches and plans but had no idea who had designed them. Some of the entries contained written statements that were so moving in their optimism for Port-au-Prince and its 3 million inhabitants, their hopes for Haiti and her people, and their longing for the rebuilt cathedral to serve as a symbol of renewal that they nearly brought me to tears.

QR Blog Editor 8-31-2012

According to Reuters (via Chicago Tribune):

An earthquake of 7.9 magnitude struck off the Philippines on Friday and a tsunami warning has been issued for the region, the U.S. Geological Survey and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said.

The quake was centered off the east coast, 91 miles off the town of Guiuan in Samar province at a depth of about 20 miles, USGS said.

The tsunami warning was issued for the Philippines, Japan, Indonesia, Taiwan, Papua New Guinea and other islands in the Pacific including the U.S. state of Hawaii.

CNN.com adds:

"An earthquake of this size has the potential to generate a destructive tsunami that can strike coastlines near the epicenter within minutes and more distant coastlines within hours," the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said.

The quake struck just before 8:50 p.m. local time, the agency said.

There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

(Image of the Washington National Cathedral by Mesut Dogan/Shutterstock.)

(Image of the Washington National Cathedral by Mesut Dogan/Shutterstock.)

WASHINGTON, D.C. — It took 83 years to build the iconic Washington National Cathedral, but a rare East Coast earthquake last summer took just seconds to send carved stone finials tumbling from the heavens to the ground below.

Now, six months after the 5.8-magnitude quake, the cathedral is facing repair costs of at least $20 million, and a reconstruction timeline that could stretch out a decade or more.

The bill to fix the iconic church is now at least $5 million more than original estimates, said church officials, who are still working to stabilize the building, repair its intricate stonework and raise money to continue the restoration.

So far, donations for repairs have reached $2 million, or 10 percent of the predicted cost.