Category: Hawai’i

Exploring the islands

A Wake-Up Quake

This one woke up everyone in the house, cats included.

A plot of the magnitude 3.1 in North Kohala on the morning of Nov 9, 2019
A plot of the magnitude 3.1 in North Kohala on the morning of Nov 9, 2019

While the eruption of 2018 had the island shaking, 2019 has had seemingly few felt earthquakes. I have gone several months without feeling a quake.

It was something of a surprise when the house rattled this morning just before 6am.

Deb asked me, “Was that a quake?”

“Yes.”

From the short, sharp rattle I guessed it was close… I was right, a magnitude 3.1 in North Kohala. It was also deep, a bit over 14 miles down. This was a classic settling quake as the weight of the island presses into the ocean crust.

On a Saturday morning we did not stay awake for long, cats included.

Update: The quake was later upgraded to a 3.4 after review by the USGS.

Were cultural sites destroyed when building observatories?

Another of the myths that plague this conversation. While not as commonly stated as some of the other myths discussed here, it has been persistent and seems to pop up regularly.

A photo of the Mauna Kea summit area from the Preston expedition of 1892
A photo of the Mauna Kea summit area from the Preston expedition of 1892

When the 12 existing facilities were built, not only were laws waived, heiau and ahus were bulldozed into trash heaps. 

wailana in a comment on Ian Lind’s blog 14Sep2019

The myth is clearly an attempt to show that the state callously allowed the destruction of cultural properties in the past, thus showing that the state does not care for Hawaiian issues and would break its own laws.

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