Friday, March 11, 2011

Shakemap for Japan

Here is the automatic Shakemap for this earthquake.  Note that we get a first glance at the rupture area, which seems to me a little short for an 8.9.  I'm sure it's at least 1000 km and zooms off to the north more.  As we can see, a classic subduction earthquake does not pump out a high PGV.  From the videos, the shaking appeared mild, and would have just hit the swamps.  This is farther out than Chile, so maybe it's just 40 cm/s on average ground.  I don't think they build soft-story condos there!

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