Although the local Chileans didn’t even notice, it was a big night for earthquakes. We had four of them on Thursday night ranging from 4.1 to 5.2.
Vinamarinos (the local term for people from Vina) don’t notice or mention earthquakes until they reach 7.0 or more; in fact, they don’t even call them “terremotos”, they are just “temblors” – or little shakes.
Note the statistic on the top left: Vina has had 69 earthquakes (ones you can see above 4.0) in the past year. That is about 6 per month or 1.5 per week!
Of course, “there is an app for that (earthquake tracking and notification)”; actually, there are many! This screenshot from QuakeFeed.com shows that Chile sits along the “Ring of Fire” where earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are more common. The Ring has 452 volcanoes, and 90% of the world’s earthquakes and 81% of the largest earthquakes occur along the Ring due to the plate tectonics (thanks Wikipedia). It is the green line below.
FYI, QuakeFeed provides real-time updates on seismic activity as well as email notifications for the concerned and the interested, as well as for wanna be seismologists.