Cruise Log #40, Volcanic Activity?
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Updated November 30th
Asunción - Shake, Rattle and Roll; with a Spew or Two
USGS map of the earthquake activity near Asunción - not the entire story.
There's nothing in the US press about it, and very little has been publicized locally,
but the village of Asunción has been evacuated. Some armchair volcanists think the more
than 90 tremors that
the village has experienced over the past week are a precursor to volcanic activity.
Stan and I met Shari, Juan, and daughter, Sirena, when we passed through Asunción a few years
ago. We enjoyed a great lunch with them at their little house out on the point.
Shari's house out where the earth coughed.
For the past week we've been reading hair-raising reports on one of the Baja forums. Eye-witness reports from Shari describe bunches of quakes and brownish gas escaping through the rocks near her house.
One of Asunción's ravaged structures (tnx to Periodica Frontera).
Here's part of Shari's report:
"Hi everyone, we just snuck back into town to get some more wine to calm our nerves....ha! OK, 2 days ago was a big town meeting where the scientists (the top guy in the field from Mexico city is now here too) and a bunch of others with more equipment...anyway they said it a "hive" type deal that is 10 km under us...definately not volcanic that may or may not continue to give us quakes, but they didn't think there would be any bigger ones. They said ford the teachers and kids to go back to school....just not go IN the school or church...that we should try to live our life as normally as possible. So lots of folks returned to their homes only to be thrown out of bed at 7:32 in the morning with a pretty big one....BAM all at once, then coninuous tremors for the next hour and a half which was nerve racking...then about (:30 came the real ZINGER that cracked wall and houses, lifted tile and roads and the cliff by our house..our house took a beating on the cliff here, really cracked all over the place and the fridge did a merry little jig and stuff fell off the shelves and there was glass everywhere from broken stuff...really folks it was AWFUL scary...and then there were constant tremors afterward all morning...the army came an hour later and told us we had to evacuate to the airstrip...which is out in the open, super windy etc. They wanted everyone in one place. OK OK...we gave in and loaded up the trucks...the co-op was giving 30 liters of gas to everyone, but all the stores were closed as the stuff fell off the shelves. they banned the sale of liquor and beer several days ago which has lots of the fishermen in a nasty mood. Thank goodness for all you folks who have left us bottles of wine that I was saving for a celebration...lots of friends showed up to help us celebrate and calm everyones nerves!! LThe phone was dead for a bit and I couldn't report in but didn't really want to be in the house anyway except to quickly throw stuff in a pack. Luckily we have our beach house in San Roque where you can't feel anything (only about 5 miles away! Finally we got some sleep but had awful volcano nightmares and kept thinking the house was shaking. Soooo, today over the VHF came another report and the scientists still say no problem...normal hive activity but they now say it is from the Tosca Abreojos fault out at sea and coming towards us here at the point??? So last meeting they said NO danger of Tsunami because they were land based quakes....so now what??? If it is in the sea should we be ready to head for the hills which there is one right behind San Roque??? It was crazy after the last big quake how the town emptied out soooo fast and everyone is too freaked to come back now. CRAP, there just went another one...it's been pretty quiet all day so if I sign off in a hurry it's cause the crap hit the fan again and I had to run...think I'll go now anyway....just wanted to keep you all posted...town is empty, everything is closed...people are scared...another small one...I'm outa here and back to San Roque then...try to post tomorrow again...love ;you all.... shari"
As of the 30th of November, that's all we have to report....
