“[afx114]We were taking some out of town buddies up to see the city from Cabrillo, so we didn’t feel a thing being in the car. Some kids ran up to us at a stop sign saying, “whoa, did you feel that?” We didn’t know what the hell they were talking about and thought they were just being dumb. Then we find out what happened and now we feel totally gypped.
My wife was born in Mexicali and we have family there. It’s a pretty crappy dusty desert town. They are all fine, but a few houses collapsed. Pretty amazing considering this was larger than the Haiti quake (7.2 vs 7.0). The difference was in the depth (20mi in Baja, 6mi in Haiti).
For you conspiracy buffs: There’s a volcano in Mexicali that is used by a geothermal plant to generate a large percentage of Baja’s electricity. The rumor amongst the residents is that the extraction of heat from the volcanic vents is what is causing the recent increase in activity there.”
Withdrawing geothermal energy would actually help reduce earthquakes if we could do it to power everything. The amount of energy released during a quake like the 7.2 is amazing. Any engineering types here want to guess at how it compares to a nuke going off.
