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Earthquakes shake floor off the coast
From Staff Reports
Friday, July 18, 2008 10:50 AM PDT
Did you feel them?
Probably not.
The first one hit at 1:36 p.m. Thursday. It 258 miles due west of Florence, with a magnitude of 5.5. It wouldn’t be the last.
The next earthquake was slightly bigger, according to the West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Center. It rattled the Pacific Ocean floor at 1:51 p.m. The epicenter was 261 miles offshore and due west of Coos Bay, with a magnitude of 5.6.
Neither earthquake generated a tsunami.
“In coastal areas of intense shaking, locally generated tsunamis can be triggered by underwater landslides,” the agency said in the quake notification.
For people on land to feel the rattling, a quake would have to be much larger — 7.1 to 7.5 — for a tsunami warning to be issued, the center’s earthquake scientists have said.
Three other quakes hit the same area and depth over the past two days. All occurred along the Juan de Fuca fault line, where the North American plate is sliding under the Juan de Fuca plate. |