Guam got a pretty strong earthquake at 12:30 this afternoon. I was eating lunch at Shirley’s when it hit. Originally pegged as a magnitude 6.0 quake, it was just upgraded to 6.2 magnitude.

It was certainly the strongest quake I’ve felt in about a year or so. A strong initial sideways jolt, then almost 45 seconds of slowly decreasing up and down temblors. Here’s the official USGS report on the quake:

Magnitude 6.2
Date-Time Wednesday, February 2, 2005 at 02:30:25 (UTC)
= Coordinated Universal Time
Wednesday, February 2, 2005 at 12:30:25 PM
= local time at epicenter
Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones
Location 14.101°N, 144.732°E
Depth 153.9 km (95.6 miles)
Region ROTA REGION, NORTHERN MARIANA ISLANDS
Distances
50 km (30 miles) W of Rota, Northern Mariana Islands
70 km (45 miles) N of HAGATNA, Guam
160 km (100 miles) SW of SAIPAN, Northern Mariana Islands
270 km (165 miles) SSW of Anatahan, Northern Mariana Islands

Location Uncertainty horizontal +/- 10 km (6.2 miles); depth +/- 10.8 km (6.7 miles)
Parameters Nst=154, Nph=154, Dmin=58.5 km, Rmss=1.04 sec, Gp= 29°,
M-type=moment magnitude (Mw), Version=7
Source USGS NEIC (WDCS-D)

Event ID usuaae
Felt Reports Felt on Guam, Rota and Saipan.

On Monday, the Guam EPA announced their choice for the new landfill for the island of Guam. The winner is the Dandan site in Malojloj Inarajan. Obviously the residents of Malojloj are not pleased with this development, but I doubt there is little they can do at this point. The island desperately needs to close the Ordot landfill, and the government officials cited myriad reasons why Dandan is the best location available; stable geology, limited impact on hydrology, large acreage available for use, etc. But let’s get down to brass tacks, Dandan was chosen because is it the remotest location they surveyed. It’s a hell of a lot easier to ignore 2 dozen families than to put a dump site near a major population area. It’s funny how every committee member interviewed in the PDN lived nowhere near Dandan. Out of sight, out of mind.