Interesting Disaster & Engineering Web Sites

The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923

http://library.brown.edu/cds/kanto/

In August 1923, William Dana Reynolds, with his wife Vera Hunt Reynolds and their young daughter Helen embarked from Honolulu on the Japanese steamship Taiyo Maru, bound for Yokohama. While at sea, the ship experienced and survived a tsunami only to arrive, badly damaged, in Yokohama Bay on September 8 as witness to the destruction caused by the Great Kanto Earthquake. Fully aware of the risks involved, Dana Reynolds recorded a series of compelling images of the horror and devastation. In the summer of 2005, the library received the photo album and began conceiving the project that culminated in this website. The goal of the project was to provide the widest possible access to these materials and to offer access to both scholars and the public alike.

USGS Twitter Earthquake Alerts

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/ted/

The USGS is offering earthquake alerts via two twitter accounts @USGSted and @USGSBigQuakes. @USGSted (USGS Twitter Earthquake Dispatch) distributes alerts for earthquakes worldwide with magnitudes of 5.5 and above. @USGSted earthquake tweets contain a magnitude descriptor, location, origin time, and a link to the USGS webpage with the most recent information about the event. In addition to the seismically derived parameters, the alerts also include the frequency of tweets in a region surrounding the event that contain the word "earthquake" or its equivalent in several languages. @USGSBigQuakes (USGS Big Quakes) is for users who are only interested in seismically derived content. @USGSBigQuakes distributes alerts for earthquakes worldwide with magnitudes of 5.5 and above.