Philippines Earthquake 2012

A tsunami alert has been issued after a magnitude-7.9 earthquake struck off the east coast of the Philippines, the United States Geological Survey says.
 
The earthquake struck at 8:47 a.m. Eastern time and 8:47 p.m. local time in the Philippines, officials said, at a depth of 21.7 miles.
The closest city to the epicenter of the quake, which was several miles off shore, is in Guinan, about 66 miles away. Manilla, the country's capital, is about 465 miles away from the epicenter.
There is no word as to damage or injuries.

Los Angeles Earthquake

The southern California town of Brawley has taken the unusual step of declaring a state of emergency after a swarm of earthquakes rattled nearly 20 mobile homes off their blocks and forced a slaughterhouse to close, the mayor said on Wednesday.
 
It is uncommon for quake-hardy California cities to declare emergencies due to tremors, but Brawley mayor George Nava said the earthquake swarm is a unique case because it has lasted for days and caused millions of dollars in damage.
The cluster of relatively small quakes, which are caused by water and other fluids moving around in the Earth's crust, began on Saturday evening and climaxed the next day with a 5.5 temblor, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The tremors were continuing on Wednesday and geologists say there have been hundreds in total.

Indonesia Quake 2012

It was not like December 2004. Sirens wailed, warnings blared and police moved millions of people away from coastlines around the Indian Ocean as Wednesday's 8.6 magnitude earthquake off northern Indonesia sparked fears of another devastating tsunami.
Damage was light - the quakes were horizontal rather than vertical - and the big waves never came, unlike eight years ago when walls of water roared across the same ocean and ploughed into seaside communities in 13 countries without warning.
"The reports were of people panicking but there was little damage. We need to check for sure," Eko Budiman, deputy head of the emergency mitigation agency, said at Medan airport in Sumatra, struggling to reach Simeulu island near the epicentre.
Five people died in northern Indonesia, at least two from heart attacks, the agency said.
The alerts and evacuations mean a regional system passed a major test since the tsunami of 2004 that killed 230,000 people, including 170,000 in northern Indonesia alone.
But luck helped avert disaster this time as much as the warning system, especially in Indonesia's Aceh province, where roads were jammed with residents trying to flee and damaged power lines silenced the sirens.
"The simple message is that in any critical condition like this it's impossible to get everyone out in time," said Keith Loveard, chief risk analyst at Jakarta-based security firm Concord Consulting.
"The tsunami alert system worked to a degree ... While awareness has improved, reinforced by 2004, it still needs to get better through public education and government campaigns."
The scenes in Banda Aceh showed the roads are just not big enough, he said, pointing to the need to build up infrastructure and "put cities in a different place."
The 2004 disaster swept in with sudden ferocity. Thailand's southwestern beaches and hotels were packed with tourists on their Christmas vacations and people were out for a stroll on Chennai's Marina Beach in southern India when the waves hit.

San Francisco Bay Area Earthquake 2012

A magnitude 4.0 earthquake shook the San Francisco Bay Area early Monday morning, according to information from the United States Geological Survey.
According to the Associated Press, no damage has been reported, although Twitter users in the region reported being woken up by the tremor.
The earthquake's epicenter was one mile from El Cerrito, just east of Richmond and about ten miles north of Oakland, the USGS reports. Initially, the quake -- which struck at 5:33 a.m. PST -- was reported to have occurred at a depth of 5.5 miles, though that number was later revised to 5.7 miles.