Earthquake in Ecuador

Hi.  This is Kaia.

We felt our first earthquake yesterday morning! But it wasn't like a totally humongous one. It was early in the morning and I was at my house. I was in my bed and when I heard some rumbling and I felt my bed wiggling. I thought it was raining so hard it was banging on our windows. 

But then when I came over to my Mom and Dad's bed, they said:

What do you think it was?  

Rain on the window?  

No....  

A bunch of people stomping through our house? 

No.... 

Ha Ha.  

Well then I tried another one.  Maybe the wind was blowing so hard or maybe people were chopping down our house? 

They said: No....  

When I said I don't know, they said:
It was an earthquake!  

I'm glad it wasn't big because then I would have thought I would die if it had been big. It lasted for like maybe 15 minutes, or half hour at the most.  Or just maybe for an hour!  My parents told me it was actually 10 seconds, which may or may not be true.  After the earthquake I woke up my brother and told him that there was an earthquake.  He didn't believe me but then Papa said there had been one. But it wasn't as big as a humongous one!  

After the earthquake - there are thousands of wild dogs and guard dogs here in Ecuador - the dogs started barking loud and for a long time.  They were feeling scared, they hated the earthquake because their dog houses started moving and they hate people touching their houses and wiggling them when they were inside. The loro (which is parrot in Spanish) next door was blowing up it's head talking so loud after the earthquake because it was mad too!

An earthquake is like this.  Say you took two pieces of paper and push them together.  What would happen?  Would it break and tear in little parts?  Or would it slip over and under each other?  Well, the earth has plates, and when they started pushing against each other, and there was too much pushing, it just collapsed and slipped over and under each other. That made the earth rumble like I said before.  The earth plates actually float on lava way deep under ground.  Some of them float around, and push against each other, and when they can't hold anymore and they push against each other, they slip over and under each other. The way you say earthquake in Spanish is terremoto.

I told these people what it felt like in our house during the earthquake:  http://earthquake.usgs.gov/

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/usb0007xce.php
EARTHQUAKE DETAILS
Magnitude: 5.6
Date-Time: Wednesday, February 08, 2012 at 05:54:43 AM - Bogota, Quito, Lima
Location: 0.682 N, 79.187 W
Depth:  69.8 km (43.4 miles)
Region: NEAR THE COAST OF ECUADOR
Distances: 65 km ESE of Esmeraldas Ecuador, 124 km WNW of Ibarra, 125 NW of Quito

This map shows all the plates pushing against each other.  The star is where our earthquake happened yesterday so you can see the plate pushing into Ecuador.

This map shows all the places where people felt the earthquake yesterday.  It is called a SHAKE MAP.  Look very carefully because you will find where they felt the rumbling the most.  We live in Cotacachi,  which is close by Ibarra on the map.  Blue on the map means it wasn't so big.  Red means it was the biggest rumbling and is really scary.

This shows where all the earthquakes happened since 1990 (which is a pretty long time ago!). The star that is yellow is where we had the earthquake. Each of the circles was an earthquake.  There have been lots of earthquakes in Ecuador!

 

The circles on this map show how long it took for waves to get to Minnesota or anywhere in the world.  To get to Minnesota it took about 8 minutes.  If they were closer to Ecuador they would feel it, but they didn't feel it in Minnesota.

I WANT TO  GO THROUGH ANOTHER EARTHQUAKE!  I hope you learned something from my blog.

Bye ciao!

Kaia