There was a very interesting talk this morning by J. Liu on work they did in the field mapping the fault breaks of the M8 Sichuan area quake. They talked to the local people a lot...one was standing on the fault, knocked down, and spun around. I suppose the question would be whether the acceleration exceeded 1 g and this person was tossed in the air or not.

Just for you, I took some notes. The abstract is on p. 67 of the volume linked above.

Besides 90,000 fatalities and missing, and 1/3 million injured, there was $1 trillion (US) damage, and will be (an additional?) $1.5 trillion to rebuild.

Two faults broke: one was oblique and steep, half right-lateral and half reverse, and 200 km-long. The other was flatter and was pure thrust, and 60 km-long. The first fault had up to 6 m of right-lateral and 6 m of vertical.

The GPS showed only slow shortening before the quake....1 to 3 mm/yr.

She showed hazard maps and the hazard was downgraded on maps from 1950s to 1990s....thought to be less hazard.

fault ruptured different place than had been mapped. There may be a stack of faults.

slickensides show that the thrust part was pure thrust, but an earlier quake on same fault was strike-slip.

Poster by Harvard group shows seismic reflection profiles across the faults system. Shaw had published one or more of these in an Atlas of structure/seismic reflection (?) a couple of years ago.

I went for a 2 hour hike this morning after the talk up the side of the mountains here but did not get very high. Thinking about going at 3 or 4 AM, but may choose sleep. I was told by a young lady that I would be eaten by Mountain Lions. I told her that Mountain lions only eat female joggers and I was too big a load to be eaten. She begged to differ, saying that they eat men also.

I saw my first Road Runner today in about 20 years.
Chris