SANTIAGO, Chile — A magnitude-6.2 magnitude earthquake damaged walls, shattered windows and knocked out electricity in parts of far-northern Chile and the Peruvian city of Tacna but no injuries or major damage were reported.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake, which occurred at 6 a.m. local time (6 a.m. EDT; 1000 GMT), was centered 66 miles (107 kilometers) northeast of the city of Arica 98 kilometers (61 miles) underground. It was also felt in the Peruvian city of Arequipa and in the Bolivian capital of La Paz, 120 miles (200 kilometers) away.Some neighborhoods in Tacna, a city of 200,000 66 kilometers (44 miles) from the epicenter, suffered brief power outages, city officials said. Tacna’s deputy civil defense chief, Jose Luis Vera, reported broken windows and rocks shaken loose onto highways but no injuries or serious damage.

The Chilean government emergency agency said about 250 people fled into the streets of Arica when the shaking started, but then returned to their homes. Arica’s port and airport were functioning normally and Chile’s Hydrographic and Oceanographic Service discounted the possibility of a tsunami.

Tarapaca region Gov. Jose Durana said walls fell in some sectors and some roads were blocked by the quake, which also cut power to more than 3,000 homes in Arica. Power also was cut for a time in the Peruvian city of Tacna.

A magnitude-7.1 quake struck central Chile on March 25 and in 2010, a magnitude-8.8 quake caused a tsunami that obliterated much of the downtown area of the coastal city of Constitucion.

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The operators of Columbia’s 44-year-old nuclear fuel factory are trying to resolve federal questions about the plant’s ability to withstand a major earthquake. While the Westinghouse Electric Co. plant meets current safety standards, federal inspectors say the company didn’t follow through on recommendations made nine years ago to further reduce chances that radiation would leak during a big quake.

The 2003 consultant’s recommendations were intended to help the Bluff Road complex south of downtown exceed existing safety standards. But a recent U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission report said the improvements never were made.

Westinghouse “was unable to provide evidence that any of these recommendations had been scheduled or implemented, nor was an explanation provided for the inaction,” the April 30 NRC report says. Officials with Westinghouse said last week that they made some of the recommended plant  improvements, but they were still working on others. The recommendations included upgrading a large number of pieces of equipment, although neither Westinghouse nor the NRC could provide further details last week.

“There was a list of equipment,” said plant health and safety official Gerry Couture. “We’ve either addressed (the recommendations) or are in the process of addressing them.”Westinghouse said some improvements don’t require upgrading equipment but removing chemicals that could be potentially hazardous. In one case, the company did that by using a less toxic chemical in a storage tank.

Company officials say it’s highly unlikely a major nuclear accident would result from an earthquake or that the public would be exposed to radiation. But in the aftermath of last year’s Japanese earthquake and tsunami, the company is currently “re-evaluating the seismic hazards,” Westinghouse said in an email to The State newspaper.

The NRC’s April report on the Westinghouse plant suggests that earthquake dangers should not be dismissed. Central South Carolina contains a large earthquake fault system. Some scientists predict the state will one day suffer a large earthquake, like the famous killer quake in Charleston during the late 19th century.

Citing a consultant’s recommendations in 2003, the NRC’s report said structural walls could collapse and equipment could topple over at the Westinghouse plant during a severe earthquake. If that happened, uranium could leak and a burst of radiation could occur, the report said. Those most likely to be exposed would be plant workers, officials said.

Marvin Sykes, chief of the NRC’s regional fuel facility inspection branch, said he would like to know why Westinghouse didn’t follow through on the suggestions by consulting engineers nine years ago to make improvements that exceed existing earthquake standards.

The upgrades weren’t required by federal law, but could provide an extra margin of safety, he said.
“We’re saying to Westinghouse: ‘You had recommendations that there were reasonable things you could have done to (improve) this facility, and you said in 2003, they were good ideas.Yet you dropped the ball in implementing them,’” Sykes said.

“This is not a violation of NRC requirements, but it does create a question in our mind.”The April 30 NRC report follows inspections at the Westinghouse plant late last year and early this year. The company also is working to satisfy NRC questions about the standards to which its facilities were built in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. The NRC has been unable to verify that the buildings were constructed in accordance with seismic standards in the Southern standard building code. Officials at the Westinghouse plant, which is owned by Toshiba of Japan, are gathering documentation to verify that.

The NRC says the plant may be fine, but it needs proof. The agency’s report says the buildings do not appear to have been designed to withstand the worst earthquake Columbia could get. The agency’s report does not say what size earthquake that would be on the Richter scale. The original portion of Westinghouse’s 550,000-square foot fuel factory was designed in 1968 and expanded later. Located on Bluff Road between I-77 and Congaree National Park, it is one of the Columbia area’s largest employers with about 1,200 workers.

The plant is one of just three in the United States that make fuel for commercial reactors. Among its customers are SCE&G, operator of the V.C. Summer power plant northwest of Columbia. Operators have encountered problems at Westinghouse in the past and the plant has been fined by the NRC. Last month, Westinghouse took a worker to the hospital after he was exposed to uranium-tinged acid while cleaning part of the plant. The worker suffered irritation on an arm and a foot, but later went back to work.

Renewed concerns
The NRC’s recent questions about the plant come at a time of heightened awareness about earthquake safety at nuclear facilities.

Since the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami destabilized atomic energy plants in Japan, the NRC has initiated action to review nuclear facilities across the United States. The agency is examining how facilities would respond to severe accidents, such as larger-than-expected natural disasters.
Much of the national attention has focused on nuclear power plants that handle highly enriched uranium, but plants that use uranium to make atomic fuel rods also are drawing NRC scrutiny.
The company says it will do what is necessary to protect workers and the public.

“Westinghouse will determine whether plant or equipment upgrades may be warranted to further enhance the safety of our facility,” the company said in an email to The State newspaper. “Nuclear safety is our number one goal in all of our operations. And Westinghouse is communicating frequently and openly with the NRC about these safety margin improvement initiatives.”

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Australia is New Zealand's biggest source of tourists, and Christchurch is still struggling to debunk the perception across the Tasman that it is still one big disaster zone. The February 2011 quake claimed 185 lives and devastated the CBD but the city is recovering.

Christchurch and Canterbury Tourism chief executive Tim Hunter told the Trenz tourism conference in Queenstown on Wednesday that Chinese, South-East Asian and European tourists were returning reasonably quickly while Japanese and Korean tourists had shied away, but were improving. "Australia, surprisingly for a country that typically exhibits so much bravado, they have been very reluctant to visit."

He said the main problem was that the aftermath of the 2011 quake was broadcast live in Australia for 72 hours. "What was ingrained on the minds of Australians was a shattered inner city and rescue operation. They didn't see the fact that half of Christchurch, the western side, was in pretty good nick ... and none of the rest of the South Island was affected at all."

The tourism body has promoted the idea of a South Island road trip rather than exclusively visiting Christchurch. It has also doubled the number of Australian media the city is hosting to show them it's still operating. A media campaign in Australia will be launched to address some of the perceptions. The good news is that the aftershocks are smaller and heading out to sea, according to seismologists.

Life is "surprisingly normal" in Christchurch, the cordoned off area in the CBD is shrinking and many businesses have successfully relocated, Mr Hunter says. Crucially, the earthquake has not affected attractions such as the Antarctic centre, Hagley Park, the Transalpine and Kaikoura train trips as well as the Air Force museum and Orana Park.

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The mock hospital has been built on a giant "shake table" which can subject the building to movements similar to real earthquakes. The tests are designed to determine if hospitals built on rubber bearings could function after a quake.

The use of these rubber bearings is common in earthquake-prone Japan. The $5m (£3.1m) project also tested whether the bearings could protect other strategically important buildings, such as computer data centres, so they could operate without interruption after a large earthquake.

It is the first time that the bearing system has been tested under a full-scale building on a shake table in the United States.

"What the bearings do is uncouple the building from the motion of the ground during an earthquake, like putting the building on roller skates," said Tara Hutchinson, an engineering professor at the University of California, San Diego.

She said that while most research concentrated on the structural integrity of buildings after an earthquake, very little examined how vital contents such as stairs, lifts and other parts of a building that allowed it to fulfil its function fared after a major seismic event.

Earthquakes replayed
The building was equipped with a surgery and an intensive-care unit, computer servers and other electrical equipment, as well as stairs and a working lift. The 80ft (24m) structure was also clad in precast concrete and synthetic stucco, two materials which are commonly used in commercial construction projects, and a large water tower and a heating and air-conditioning system was installed on the roof.

On the first day of testing in early April, the shake table subjected the building to identical motions to those recorded during the 1994 Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles, which measured 6.7 on the Richter scale, and the 8.8-magnitude Chile earthquake in 2010.

The engineers found that the rubber bearings (or "base isolators") successfully protected the building from most of the damaging lateral motion that it would experience during a real earthquake. It also left lifts, stairs, medical equipment and other machinery intact, although there was some minor cosmetic damage.

"What we found is that the contents of the building carried on working after our 'earthquakes'," said Professor Hutchinson. "If the equipment had been life-support systems keeping real people alive, then the bearings would have saved their lives."

Engineers have now removed the base isolators from beneath the building, and over the next three weeks Professor Hutchinson will repeat the simulated earthquakes so that a direct comparison can be made between the damage to the building's contents with and without them in place. Rubber base isolators have already been retrofitted under the Los Angeles, Oakland and San Francisco city halls.

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Experts say a "swarm" of small earthquakes off the northwest coast of Vancouver Island are part of the normal seismic activity in the area, and they could continue for several more days. A 4.0 magnitude earthquake that struck just after midnight on Tuesday morning was the eighth small quake with a magnitude between 3.8 and 4.7 to strike the region since April 22.

Pacific Geoscience Centre Seismologist Gary Rogers said the activity is focused along a 20-kilometre stretch along an area called the Raveer Delwood Fault, located about 200 kilometres offshore.

"In the very thin crust that we have out there off our west coast of Vancouver Island, it often fractures in a series of small earthquakes, usually about this size being the maximum."Rogers said more small earthquakes are expected in the area over the next week.

"They often go on for days. There's been a lot of smaller ones, so eventually they'll wind down, but typically, what we've seen in the past is that most of these swarms last a few days to a week or so."A similar but more powerful swarm that struck the same area in August 2008 included a magnitude 5.2 quake.

Experts have been warning a major earthquake hits B.C. every 500 years, and the last one was in 1700. But they said the swarm of small earthquake activity does not indicate a larger earthquake is more likely in the short term.

The last significant quake to rattle the West Coast was a magnitude 6.5 tremor centered that struck about 50 kilometres off the west coast of the island in September of 2011, swaying high-rises as far away as Vancouver, Kelowna and Seattle.

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MEXICO CITY—A moderate earthquake off the coast of Baja California swayed buildings in Mexico City Tuesday. Mexico City's mayor says there were no immediate reports of damage in the capital. The U.S. Geological Survey says the 5.0 quake was centered 183 kilometres off the coast of Cabo San Lucas and 10.9 kilometres deep.

Many businesses were closed for a holiday in Mexico City, which has been rocked by a series of strong earthquakes and aftershocks in recent days. Few people were at work or on the street. Alfonso Gomez is assistant director of the civil protection service in the state capital of La Paz and says the quake had not been felt in the city. He says there were no immediate reports of any damage in Baja California Sur.

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A change to Jerusalem's building code could threaten the capital's unique architectural flavor, particularly in neighborhoods belonging to the classic era predating the country's independence.

Meant to encourage developers to earthquake-proof buildings in Jerusalem, a proposed amendment to the National Master Plan would provide incentives to developers to reinforce structures in more areas of the city. But architects warn that the proposal, now awaiting final approval, could spell disaster for areas built up before 1948 - areas with rich architectural history and distinctive streets and houses, dubbed the "historic city."Most of Jerusalem's centrally located areas are included in this designation: Baka, Rehavia, downtown, Romema, Mea She'arim, Mekor Barukh, Nahlaot, along with Sheikh Jarrah and the American Colony on the city's east side. Tourists and real estate developers share a fascination with these neighborhoods, and their property prices are among the steepest in the city. The term "historic city" was coined by a group of architects who view the neighborhoods' unique architectural styles as a rare collection of historic building patterns.

"This is a mosaic unique to Jerusalem, reflecting the city's development over the years," says architect Aliza Arens, of Rosenfeld Arens Architects.

The planning authorities are apparently oblivious to all this. Amendment 3 to National Master Plan 38 (Tama 38 ) provides incentives to property owners to reinforce their buildings against earthquakes, while Amendment 3 is meant to encourage developers to apply the plan to areas where it would otherwise be considered "less economically feasible." The Jerusalem branch of the architects association recently appealed the amendment, asking to exempt the historic area from the plan.

Arens, along with her colleagues who filed the appeal - architects Carlos Prus, the branch chairman; Selma Arad; Avi Ben-Gur; and Amos Hammerman - are worried the amendment could lead to an onslaught of development in the historic city.

"We understand the need for a city to develop and grow, but it needs to be done with an understanding of the infrastructure," emphasizes Arens. "Based on the amendment, two and a half floors could be added above an existing building. It also makes it easier to demolish buildings and get breaks in planning requirements. This combination is disastrous for the historic city. Jerusalem is dear to us and different than any other city. Uncontrolled planning could be damaging."

"There can't be one sweeping plan for the entire city," says Hammerman, former Jerusalem district architect of the Interior Ministry's planning authority. "Planning needs to be match each neighborhood's character. A close look at the municipal plan shows that the incentives to demolish a building and replace it with another one apply to the historic city too. This is a recipe for destroying the city's distinctiveness."

City looking after its pockets
The position of Jerusalem's municipality is similar to that of the architects, but its motives are different. The city's plan for reinforcing buildings had allowed adding two and a half floors to five-story buildings or those with more than 20 apartments. But the municipality has since backed off from this plan and now wants to limit building rights to one and a half stories. It also wants to exempt the historic city and places designated for conservation from incentives provided by NMP 38, due to the fact that these are prestigious areas where land prices are high.

A survey conducted for the municipality by property assessor Sam Rubel shows that land prices range from NIS 8,300 to NIS 19,500 per square meter in neighborhoods like Katamonim, Pat, Neveh Yaakov, Gilo, Ramot, Kiryat Hayovel, Sanhedria, French Hill, Rassco and Talpiot. Prices in the historic city neighborhoods, in contrast, could reportedly reach NIS 33,600 per square meter.

The city's stance on the issue, as presented by municipal projects manager Shmuel Mahala at a forum of the National Planning and Building Council in December, revolves around betterment taxes collected by the municipality. Mahala claimed the reinforcement plan causes enormous economic damage to the local authority and that incentives should be rolled back in the rest of the city as well.

"The municipality can expect heavy losses in income due to betterment tax exemptions," Mahala stated at the meeting, suggesting that the government should compensate the city for the burden of relinquishing this income. He also presented the municipality's position that all Jerusalem should be included in Appendix 2 of the amendment, a list of localities where the permitted building additions are limited to just one and a half stories. The district committee, after studying the municipality's objections to the plan, recommended that the national council accept most of its demands and reduce incentives for the entire city.

"The municipality is asking to scale back rights given under NMP 38 throughout the city, not just in the historic city," explains an architect in close contact with city hall. "The Jerusalem municipality isn't revealing its policy, but its main argument is the need for betterment taxes and the damage caused to it by exemptions from the tax. Its explanations are backed by an unreliable pricing table purporting to show that land prices in the historic city are higher than prices in other areas of the city. But the table indicates that land prices in 18 neighborhoods outside the historic city are identical to those within it. So why should it apply a double standard here?"

"The city is also ignoring the fact that, even if land in areas like Mea She'arim and the Zichron Yaakov neighborhood is very expensive, their residents belong to a very low socioeconomic class, but they also deserve having their buildings reinforced," adds the architect. "As long as they're not provided with incentives, these residents will lose out."

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Anyone who has been through earthquake drills in school knows the standard defense against falling debris is for students to crawl under their desks. Unfortunately, while this might block a few pieces of stray drywall and glass, a wooden desk isn't going to withstand the crushing weight from large chunks of concrete or steel. In fact, people hiding under their desks could very likely become trapped with no way out. That's why two designers have developed an "earthquake-proof" desk that can absorb the impact of up to a ton of weight and even provide emergency routes for rescue crews to reach trapped students.

Arthur Brutter and Ido Bruno built the desk as their final project at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, and then presented it as part of the school's Design Bonanza exhibit in Milan, Italy. When designing it, the two students had to consider not just the durability of the desk, but also how it would be used every day in the classroom. To keep the weight down so it could be moved easily by students and teachers, they settled on outfitting each corner of the school desk with collapsible "crush zones" that distribute the brunt of an impact to the edges, rather than the middle. They also constructed it from inexpensive materials to keep the final product at an affordable price for schools.

Finally the desk was submitted to a battery of tests by having different materials of different weights dropped on it from a height. The designers dropped solid blocks of steel and concrete as well as bags of rocks weighing up to 1,000 kg (about 1 ton) onto their desk. Each time, the top of the desk was destroyed, but the bottom remained intact, giving students enough space to remain safe from harm. With the desks lined up in rows, this space could also act as escape tunnels for students to escape or be more easily rescued by emergency workers.

Brutter and Bruno are currently awaiting a patent and official approval from Padua University in Italy so they can begin distributing their desks to disaster-prone areas around the world.

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The earthquake may have measured only a 3.9, but it still could make history in Orange County. Monday's temblor, centered in the southern suburb of Laguna Niguel, could be the first measured on a fault discovered only 13 years ago and running along the coast from Newport Beach and Costa Mesa to San Juan Capistrano — close to the San Onofre nuclear power plant. The little-known fault — called the San Joaquin Hills thrust — is similar to the fault that triggered the deadly Northridge quake in the San Fernando Valley 18 years ago.

Unlike the famous San Andreas fault, which can be seen on the surface, the fracture in the earth's crust that makes up the San Joaquin Hills thrust fault is entirely underground. Because there is no visible break in the earth's crust at ground level, the fault is perhaps more dangerous because it's unclear exactly where the boundaries are.

Scientists weren't aware of the blind thrust faults that triggered the 6.7 Northridge earthquake in 1994, or the 6.0 Whittier Narrows quake in 1987, until after the ground began shaking.

Experts say Monday's temblor should serve as a wake-up call, particularly to Orange County residents who mistakenly believe that quakes are more of an L.A. problem. Scientists believe that the San Joaquin Hills thrust fault is capable of generating a magnitude 7 quake or greater.

The U.S. Geological Surveyin 2003 conducted a scenario of such a quake and found it could trigger severe shaking on a large swath of southern Orange County, including Costa Mesa, Irvine, Lake Forest, Mission Viejo, Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, Dana Point and San Juan Capistrano.

"If this morning's earthquake was on this fault, this is an example of what the fault is capable of doing," said Lisa Grant Ludwig, a UC Irvine associate professor who was the lead author of a paper in the journal Geology in 1999 announcing the discovery of the San Joaquin Hills thrust fault.

"I think there's an under-appreciation of the seismic hazard in Orange County," Grant Ludwig said. "There is a general perception in Orange County that we don't have as much earthquake hazard" — in part because the county has not suffered a major, destructive quake since 1933, when the area was sparsely populated.

Scientists discovered the San Joaquin Hills thrust fault after noticing evidence of ancient sea life in the hills. The researchers hypothesized that the land was once below sea level, but over hundreds of thousands of years the fault caused the earth to move upward, creating the hilly terrain.

In a 2002 follow-up report in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, Grant Ludwig found evidence of marsh deposits about 3 to 12 feet above the current shoreline. That suggested that the fault generated a magnitude 7 temblor sometime between the mid-17th and mid-19th centuries, which "may have generated the largest earthquake in the Los Angeles Basin since Western explorers reached the area."

There were no reports of damage in Monday's quake, which hit at 10:37 a.m. Southern California Edison said there was no impact at its San Onofre nuclear plant, which has been shut down since January because of safety concerns.

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The New Zealand Red Cross 2011 Earthquake Commission has confirmed a new grant, to help some of the most vulnerable people affected by the Canterbury earthquakes. The Disability Support Grant is for people with disabilities and their carers, whose quality of life has been adversely affected by damage to infrastructure and reduced access to services.

The cash grant is for $750 and can be used for respite care, transport, recreation or simply a break out of Christchurch. Earthquake Commission chair Sir John Hansen says many carers in Canterbury are reaching breaking point trying to deal with their own earthquake damage, and their job is being made harder by greater travel times and fewer facilities.

“The closure of facilities like QEII and Centennial Pool has had an enormous impact on the recreational options for people with disabilities. “International research shows people with disabilities are disproportionately disadvantaged in disasters, and also tend to be excluded.”The Commission will also be providing more help to those most seriously injured in the earthquakes.

Previously Red Cross gave these people, who include amputees and those paralysed, a grant of $7500, but Sir John Hansen says many are still struggling and need more help. “The Commission has decided to reopen all past Red Cross grants to the most seriously injured people.

“Many of these people missed out on applying at the time because they were in comas or in hospital, and in some ways they have been forgotten.”The Red Cross Earthquake Commission is looking into further ways it can help these people and their families, and the relatives of those killed in the earthquake. The Commission has also relaxed the criteria for two existing grants.

The Independent Advice Grant will be extended to include some households zoned Green/Blue (technical category 3) with under $100,000 damage. The Storage Grant will now be open to renters and some homeowners with under $100,000 damage. “This may go some way towards helping those who are having difficulty during Canterbury’s current housing shortage.

“While we don’t have the funds to help with housing, covering storage costs means there is one less thing for these people to worry about,” Sir John Hansen says. Twelve million dollars is earmarked for the new grants.
 
In total more than $67 million in grants has been distributed to 76,888 people. More than $115 million has been raised to date by the New Zealand Red Cross from the September and February earthquake appeals.

The total includes $14 million donated from overseas for specific purposes such as the long term recovery of Christchurch. The remaining $34 million is earmarked for grants which are still open, including those announced today.

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