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Why is an earthquake dangerous?

What are earthquake waves, how is earthquake magnitude measured, where do earthquakes occur.

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Over the centuries, earthquakes have been responsible for millions of deaths and an incalculable amount of damage to property. Depending on their intensity, earthquakes (specifically, the degree to which they cause the ground’s surface to shake) can topple buildings and bridges , rupture gas pipelines and other infrastructure, and trigger landslides , tsunamis , and volcanoes .  These phenomena are primarily responsible for deaths and injuries. Very great earthquakes occur on average about once per year.

Earthquake waves, more commonly known as seismic waves , are vibrations generated by an earthquake and propagated within Earth or along its surface. There are four principal types of elastic waves: two, primary and secondary waves, travel within Earth, whereas the other two, Rayleigh and Love waves, called surface waves, travel along its surface. In addition, seismic waves can be produced artificially by explosions.

Magnitude is a measure of the amplitude (height) of the seismic waves an earthquake’s source produces as recorded by seismographs . Seismologist Charles F. Richter created an earthquake magnitude scale using the logarithm of the largest seismic wave’s amplitude to base 10. Richter’s scale was originally for measuring the magnitude of earthquakes from magnitudes 3 to 7, limiting its usefulness. Today the moment magnitude scale, a closer measure of an earthquake’s total energy release, is preferred.

Earthquakes can occur anywhere, but they occur mainly along fault lines (planar or curved fractures in the rocks of Earth’s crust ), where compressional or tensional forces move rocks on opposite sides of a fracture. Faults extend from a few centimetres to many hundreds of kilometres. In addition, most of the world’s earthquakes occur within the Ring of Fire , a long horseshoe-shaped belt of earthquake epicentres , volcanoes , and tectonic plate boundaries fringing the Pacific basin .

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earthquake , any sudden shaking of the ground caused by the passage of seismic waves through Earth ’s rocks. Seismic waves are produced when some form of energy stored in Earth’s crust is suddenly released, usually when masses of rock straining against one another suddenly fracture and “slip.” Earthquakes occur most often along geologic faults , narrow zones where rock masses move in relation to one another. The major fault lines of the world are located at the fringes of the huge tectonic plates that make up Earth’s crust. ( See the table of major earthquakes.)

Little was understood about earthquakes until the emergence of seismology at the beginning of the 20th century. Seismology , which involves the scientific study of all aspects of earthquakes, has yielded answers to such long-standing questions as why and how earthquakes occur.

About 50,000 earthquakes large enough to be noticed without the aid of instruments occur annually over the entire Earth. Of these, approximately 100 are of sufficient size to produce substantial damage if their centres are near areas of habitation. Very great earthquakes occur on average about once per year. Over the centuries they have been responsible for millions of deaths and an incalculable amount of damage to property.

The nature of earthquakes

Causes of earthquakes.

Earth’s major earthquakes occur mainly in belts coinciding with the margins of tectonic plates. This has long been apparent from early catalogs of felt earthquakes and is even more readily discernible in modern seismicity maps, which show instrumentally determined epicentres. The most important earthquake belt is the Circum-Pacific Belt , which affects many populated coastal regions around the Pacific Ocean —for example, those of New Zealand , New Guinea , Japan , the Aleutian Islands , Alaska , and the western coasts of North and South America . It is estimated that 80 percent of the energy presently released in earthquakes comes from those whose epicentres are in this belt. The seismic activity is by no means uniform throughout the belt, and there are a number of branches at various points. Because at many places the Circum-Pacific Belt is associated with volcanic activity , it has been popularly dubbed the “Pacific Ring of Fire .”

A second belt, known as the Alpide Belt , passes through the Mediterranean region eastward through Asia and joins the Circum-Pacific Belt in the East Indies . The energy released in earthquakes from this belt is about 15 percent of the world total. There also are striking connected belts of seismic activity, mainly along oceanic ridges —including those in the Arctic Ocean , the Atlantic Ocean , and the western Indian Ocean —and along the rift valleys of East Africa . This global seismicity distribution is best understood in terms of its plate tectonic setting .

Natural forces

Earthquakes are caused by the sudden release of energy within some limited region of the rocks of the Earth . The energy can be released by elastic strain , gravity, chemical reactions, or even the motion of massive bodies. Of all these the release of elastic strain is the most important cause, because this form of energy is the only kind that can be stored in sufficient quantity in the Earth to produce major disturbances. Earthquakes associated with this type of energy release are called tectonic earthquakes.

In Valle de Vázquez, Mexico, a resident watches his house being demolished, four days after the 19 September 2017 earthquake. Photo by Hector Vivas/Getty

When does after begin?

Three earthquakes hit mexico city on the same date in 1985, 2017 and 2022. the coincidence left the city stranded in time.

by Lachlan Summers   + BIO

Shortly before 7:19am on 19 September 1985, time began to shift in Mexico City. It started with a tremor, emerging from the subduction zone on the Pacific coast, about 300 km southwest of the metropolis. The magnitude 7.4 quake took less than a minute to travel through the surface of southern Mexico before arriving beneath the city. Amplified by soft soils, it reached magnitude 8.1, killing, according to government data, around 10,000 people (the real number is likely much higher – perhaps as many as 40,000 people), and immediately causing 400 buildings to collapse (3,000 would eventually be demolished). Telephone lines went down, sewerage flooded the drinking water, roads into and out of the city became blocked. In the aftermath, up to 700,000 of the estimated 9.1 million residents in the Federal District of Mexico City were left homeless – the state response to the disaster was catastrophically incompetent. And behind it all, as the event recedes into memory, time itself began to take on ever-stranger forms.

During the following years, while city and federal governments grappled with the political fallout, the anniversary of the earthquake became a date on which the state expresses its contrition for the past and demonstrates its preparedness for the future. Every year since 1985, a minute’s silence is held on 19 September, followed by commemorative events, the unveiling of memorials and monuments, the inauguration of new preventative technologies and infrastructures, and the promulgation of risk-reduction legislation – all to ensure that similar disasters are avoided.

These state performances are also met with protests from residents demanding the government be held to account for rampant corruption in the real estate industry, which had led to the substandard construction in many of the collapsed buildings. In the early 1990s, evacuation drills were added to the commemorative events of 19 September. And in the early 2000s, these anniversary evacuations followed the sounding of the city’s Seismic Alert System ( Sistema de Alerta Sísmica Mexicano , or SASMEX), which was gradually being implemented across the metropolis. From loudspeakers on street corners, the alert begins as a pulsing, vibrating rhythm that is more eerie than alarming. Over this sound, a cold monotone voice repeats the words ‘ Alerta sísmica ’. The anniversary becomes a day for declaring that the events of 19 September 1985 will never happen again. It turns the earthquake into something to be memorialised: a historical event.

A ll that changed in 2017, when the alarm sounded twice on 19 September. Once for the memorial and commemorative evacuations, and then again, two hours later, for a devastating magnitude 7.1 earthquake that killed more than 300 people and levelled dozens of buildings. For the survivors, the coincidence begins to create profound temporal disorientation. How, survivors ask each other, could this be happening again? How could the two most devastating earthquakes in Mexico City’s history strike on the same date?

Some residents told me that when the second alarm sounded, they assumed it was another commemoration of the 1985 earthquake rather than a warning of a new tremor, and so they remained in their buildings until the city began to shake. Fernanda, a woman living in southern Mexico City, told me:

I simply could not believe it… I heard the alert and thought to myself: ‘That’s strange, another drill.’ I did not think: ‘That’s another earthquake.’ I guess I thought that earthquakes would only come [during the other] 364 days of the year.

The apparent impossibility of the coincidence wreaked havoc with the past and present: people ran home to check on their apartments, only to inadvertently run back in time to where they lived in 1985. My friend Eli told me that when the city’s second alert began sounding before the 2017 earthquake, he became ‘ atascado ’ (meaning stranded, as in jammed, stuck or overwhelmed). ‘Here was the alert saying that an earthquake will happen,’ he told me, shaking his head. ‘But a large part of me is just wondering: Where am I? Is this really happening? ’ Another friend, Carlos, described a similar sense of confusion. Earthquakes that were once separate Earthly events were now interconnected ‘reminders that the Earth is always happening to us’. And for Elena, whom I met in 2019 at a protest for still-homeless victims from the 1985 and 2017 disasters, the earthquakes never really ended. Though the tremors stopped, their effects lingered.

The unlikelihood of the coincidence showed that time was never really under human control

These responses all reflect a sensibility that is now common in Mexico City: when the 2017 earthquake struck, time itself shifted a little. Younger people, who ‘remember’ the 1985 disaster only through its annual commemoration, find themselves stranded between the inertia of human-historical time – of clocks, calendars and national anniversaries – and the demands of a looping geological moment. Since then, for many residents, it was as if the present became ceaseless and extensive, and the past and the future stopped being mutually exclusive temporal categories.

A 2020 survey by the newspaper El Financiero showed that Mexico City’s residents were particularly fearful of earthquakes. But, during my time in the city, I noticed that this fear was new and different: after the 2017 event, people had become more afraid of earthquakes. Like people living in other seismic zones, the city’s residents are accustomed to experiencing earthquakes, but the coincidence in 2017 proved too strange to simply consign to Earth’s arbitrary movements. Alongside the increased fear of seismicity, that same survey showed that much of the city is now frightened of 19 September – as a date . In the city’s collective imagination, the earthquakes that have occurred on other dates since 2017 are mere geological flotsam; 19 September, however, is a day that now belongs to Earth. Each anniversary, residents will attempt to either work from home, find open spaces away from buildings, or leave Mexico City entirely. All are worried about being caught somewhere precarious when the next 19 September arrives. And each year, fewer and fewer attend the protests, not because they are losing interest in justice for those who lost their homes in 2017, but because they are terrified of being in the city on the anniversary.

I am an anthropologist who writes about time, the state, and how people experience strange, inconceivable events. During the six years I conducted ethnographic research in Mexico City, I learned a little about how the geological coincidence in 2017 has shifted residents’ experience of time. One change is that the unlikelihood of the coincidence showed that time was never really under human control. Though a geological event can seem to have ended from a human perspective, it may, as Carlos told me, still be ongoing for Earth. In geological terms, the interval between 1985 and 2017 is just an instant. This dilation of human time by Earth becomes especially visceral as each anniversary approaches, and geological forces promise once again to gather human futures into an ongoing Earthly present. Though time might seem to be advancing for humans – the future becoming the present, the present the past – this temporal flow is contained in one duration for Earth: a long geological now. In the temporal imagination of Mexico City’s residents, it’s as if 19 September has become three things: a date on the calendar, a reminder of events in the City’s history, and a marker of the inhuman forces that have ravaged Earth in perpetuity. For many residents, the categories of past, present and future have become subject to the whims of a capricious Earth.

O pening a geology textbook unleashes a torrent of metaphor and analogy in which Earth appears to live and breathe. Slopes are described as ‘retreating’, mountains can be ‘revived’, streams ‘defeated’, plains ‘undulating’, walls ‘hanging’, glaciers ‘pulsating’ and rocks ‘fatigued’. As a descriptive science, noticing deep-time processes that appear static in human lifetimes – like the movements of tectonic plates – requires a turn to the metaphoric. Earthly metaphors seem to provide a sense of stability in our everyday lives that liquid metaphors can’t. We ‘lay the groundwork’ for plans; we seek a ‘sure footing’ or a ‘steady foundation’ on terra firma . Perhaps this sense of stability is why seismology offers such potent metaphors for massive, sudden or irreversible change. We might hear about ‘tectonic shifts’ in values and meanings, or entrenched political ‘fault lines’, or of an event’s inevitable ‘aftershocks’. This last metaphor, aftershock, is particularly malleable. It is used to describe post-traumatic stress disorder, interest rate rises, the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, and many other moments in which changes produce lasting effects. ‘Aftershock’ is a metaphor that locates an event by pointing to its consequences, using a linear imagination of time to move from cause to effect. But looking at the experience of aftershock sequences can open our imaginations to how time’s coherence is contingent upon the stability of an erratic Earth.

The term ‘aftershock’ comes from the Japanese seismologist Fusakichi Omori, who realised in 1895 that three major Japanese earthquakes – in Kumamoto (1889), Nōbi (1891) and Kagoshima (1893) – were in fact a single, staggered event. By identifying their contiguity, the similarity of their wave forms and other factors, he positioned these discrete events into an ongoing process that became known as the ‘aftershock sequence’. Omori’s Law, and Tokuji Utsu’s later amendments (known collectively as the Omori-Utsu Law) state that, after a shallow earthquake, the parts of the fault that slipped will readjust causing connected earthly movements, but over time, the probability of those events will diminish. In concrete terms, the likelihood of an aftershock the day after an earthquake will be half what it was the day of the earthquake, around one-tenth by the 10th day, and so on. In the mid-20th century, the Gutenberg-Richter Law added that the higher the magnitude of the mainshock, the more frequent and stronger are its aftershocks. Importantly, though aftershock timings, numbers and locations broadly conform to these statistical rules, they remain stochastic.

Paying attention to different forms of aftershock transforms the linear sequence of events into something strange and less determinate. Context renders metaphor uncanny . For instance, an important variable is the speed with which tectonic plates move. Along the San Andreas Fault, which moves around 37 mm per year, aftershock sequences tend to end about 10 years after an earthquake. In the New Madrid seismic zone of the eastern United States, however, tectonic plates move at close to 0.2 mm per year, so any earthquake that happened there before 2012 is considered an aftershock of an earthquake from 1812.

What might be ‘after’ for the city might still be ‘before’ for Earth

In the 14 months after the 1891 Nōbi earthquake in Japan, 3,090 aftershocks were recorded; by 1975, three to four still registered each year. Some seismologists theorise that the magnitude 7.6 earthquake that struck Chiloé Island in Chile in 2016 was an aftershock of the magnitude 9.5 Valdivia earthquake in 1960. Moreover, mainshocks will often be preceded by foreshocks. The 1960 Valdivia earthquake was preceded by a magnitude 8.1 earthquake 33 hours prior; likewise, the magnitude 9.2 Sumatran earthquake of 2004 might have been presaged by a magnitude 7.6 foreshock in 2002. It’s not hard to imagine that a foreshock of that severity would have been considered a mainshock until a larger earthquake occurred. For example, on 24 August 2016, the municipality of Accumoli in Italy was struck by a magnitude 6.2 earthquake. Thousands of aftershocks followed it, hundreds each day, some up to magnitude 5.5, with a generalised decay in frequency and force. Then, on 30 October, a magnitude 6.6 earthquake struck the region – an aftershock that repositioned the August mainshock as a foreshock.

An aftershock sequence has a slippery temporality, despite its use as a metaphor denoting a linear succession of events. The relationship between foreshock, mainshock and aftershock only becomes clear long after the extended event has died down, sometimes at a scale that troubles conceptions of causality. This form of seismic time is not knowable through the human experience of a single seismic event. Instead, it is a geological process instituted within an earthquake that endures beyond it, distributed across years or decades. Under such conditions, ideas like ‘past’ and ‘future’ are shifting, contingent categories. One cannot be sure if their ‘present’ is before or after a mainshock – before or after (or within) the geological ‘present’ of Earth.

This describes how many people have experienced the uncanny geological temporality of Mexico City. Though the 2017 earthquake was not an aftershock of the 1985 tremor, the unpredictable temporality of an aftershock sequence, particularly the notion of an uncertain ‘present’, is a means of understanding residents’ sense that geological time had displaced the time of Mexico City. What might be ‘after’ for the city might still be ‘before’ for Earth.

I was in Mexico City in 2021, in the weeks before 19 September. As the date approached, the sense of an uncertain present began to return once again. While travelling through the city, overhearing conversations or talking with friends, I began to get a sense of these growing temporal anxieties. Some residents began to worry that this 19 September would be Mexico City’s last.

Shortly before 9pm on 7 September, as I sat reading in the window of my apartment, with the buzz of fat summer raindrops filling the street below, I heard the speakers of the city’s early warning system suddenly crackle to life. The other residents and I ran downstairs to await the coming earthquake, which arrived 20 seconds or so later. The electricity immediately cut out as a magnitude 7.1 quake, with long, rolling waves, turned the city’s surface to a piece of fabric billowing in a gentle breeze. It lasted for around two minutes. Fortunately, despite its magnitude and duration, the earthquake caused little damage. But, climbing back to our apartment, I receive a text message from a friend: ‘No way, it’s September 7, again . ’ Four years earlier, the earthquake of 19 September 2017 had been prefigured by an earthquake on 7 September. The tremor we had just felt began to appear like a geological promise: a confirmation that Mexico City was headed for another disaster on 19 September 2021. We had 12 days.

The odds were so low that an earthquake would appear on the same date in 1985 and 2017 that some residents felt they had become exposed to a timescale that would make such geological coincidences possible. The unlikely becomes inevitable, precisely because of its improbability. And so, another earthquake was expected to arrive on 19 September 2021, and every other year since the 2017 coincidence.

Residents were convinced that the city’s repeating geological loop had initiated

Back in 2018, when the first anniversary of the 2017 quake approached (and the 33rd anniversary of 1985), a cartoon by Victor Solís was shared widely on social media, particularly in the WhatsApp group chats I shared with earthquake victims and their advocates. (Since then, Solís says, it ‘religiously wanders and arrives to him via WhatsApp on this day each year.’) The cartoon shows a man in pyjamas praying at the side of his bed on the evening before 19 September. The text at the base of the image, the man’s prayer, translates as ‘… and that tomorrow would be nothing more than just the drill.’

Cartoon by Victor Solís

This feeling underpinned the 12 days of expectation in 2021. Shortly after I received the message from my friend alerting me to the similarities with the 2017 earthquakes, a rumour went viral across Mexican social media reminding the city of its geological history. A common version of the message reads:

Do you want to scare yourselves? On 7 September 1985, there was a strong earthquake in Mexico City; on 19 September, an earthquake gravely damaged the heart of Mexico City. On 7 September 2017, Mexico City trembled hard; then, on 19 September, another earthquake shook Mexico. And today, 7 September, it just trembled very hard. Strange coincidences.

Residents were convinced that the city’s repeating geological loop had initiated. During the ominous 12 days between 7 and 19 September, Mexican seismologists appeared for interviews on television and in newspapers, reminding the city that Earth cares nothing for human calendars. Experts do this each September, but in 2021 they went so far as to publish seismograms showing unequivocally that there was no geological relationship between the dates 7 September and 19 September in 1985. Contrary to the rumours, there was no significant earthquake on 7 September 1985. And yet, despite the reassurances, the geological coincidence seems bound to return because Mexico City is in an ongoing geological present: after a before, but still before an after.

This expectation sometimes transforms anxiety into outright hysteria and panic. Upon hearing commemorative sounding of Mexico City’s earthquake alarm, some residents have nervous breakdowns, throw themselves out windows, or fall down stairs. Each year since 2019, the city’s governor has announced the number of injuries that the commemorative evacuation causes each anniversary. The double anniversary is so heavy with Earthly time and human history that it is as if, until 2017, 19 September was a date on which earthquakes couldn’t happen, but after 2017, it became a date on which they had to.

We wait nervously throughout the 12 days of anticipation in 2021. Ultimately, an earthquake doesn’t strike on 19 September. But relief is short-lived. Unfortunately for Mexico City, there is a 19 September every year, an annual promise that the city’s ‘after’ has yet to begin. We begin waiting and expecting. Will it happen again?

I n an earthquake, the time of Earth and the time of human experience intersect. As John McPhee suggests in Annals of the Former World (1998), thinking at these two timescales – ‘one human and emotional, the other geologic’ – induces a form of temporal schizophrenia because they are ‘so disparate’. Generally, the experience of geological time at a day-to-day level involves an abstracted, expanded frame of reference that demands leaps of imagination: Picture seeing emptiness where Mt Fuji once stood; envisage the landmass now known as India colliding with the continent of Asia; imagine the Himalayas swelling up. But in Mexico City post-2017, the peculiar convergence of these two timescales provokes a more visceral sense of Earthly forces that would otherwise remain abstract. This feeling of a deep-time present becomes especially acute on the most geologically unstable date in Mexican history.

On 19 September 2019, I stood alongside earthquake victim advocacy groups in Mexico City while we waited for the commemorative evacuation drill. When the alert began sounding, many around me put their fingers in their ears to drown out the robotic voice blandly repeating ‘ Alerta sísmica ’ over the ghostly, pulsating tone of the alarm. As if the early warning alert itself were somehow causal of earthquakes, a woman said under her breath: ‘ Que se quede tranquila la tierra hoy ’ (‘That the earth would remain tranquil today’) and we murmured our agreement until the alert drowned us out.

One explanation of these fears of 19 September might be that residents are experiencing a kind of seismic PTSD – a fearful response to a date marked by the human grief and suffering that a volatile Earth can deliver. This may be true to some extent, but understanding the experience of being ensnared in geological time as a form of trauma is insufficient. ‘Trauma’ can psychologise experiences, obscuring the important role of structural and environmental factors. Trauma can also be an elastic concept, capable of describing the experiences of – as Ruth Leys points out in her 2000 book – both the attendees of a wedding bombed by a drone, and the pilot who did the bombing. But most importantly, trauma has a linear temporality, especially in experiences of post -traumatic stress, in which a past event determines the future. This linear sense of time and history can reduce contemporary experience to an epiphenomenon of the past, which risks discounting the strangeness of the present in Mexico City. To view residents’ fears as seismic PTSD would also require overlooking what happened an hour or so after the commemorative alarm sounded on 19 September 2022.

These temporal geometries contort human history into strange and terrifying shapes

When the third 19 September earthquake happened, and the ground began to tremble, the city lost power. The magnitude 7.7 tremor was felt in 12 states, damaging buildings and killing two people. It was relatively minor compared with the earthquakes of 1985 and 2017 but, as the city shook for a third time, the temporality of trauma shifted: fears and anxieties that might have appeared to result from past disasters could no longer be considered ‘post-traumatic’ because the ‘post-’ had yet to begin. Human time was being swallowed by an abyssal geological present.

I ran to check on my apartment, then went to a cantina . With the power out, the bartenders were taking beers from their fridges and putting them in big buckets of ice on the street. Workers, holidaymakers, street vendors and police officers all sat on the footpath, drinking warm beer, and theorising what the hell was happening to Mexico City. There was a 0.026 per cent chance that the 2017 earthquake would happen on the anniversary of the 1985 disaster; we would later find out that the 2022 earthquake had about a 0.000751 per cent chance of happening. But for everyone I spoke with, its unlikelihood guaranteed that it would happen. The improbable was not impossible, least of all in Mexico City. I heard countless theories that explained the tremor: the city was in an Earthly loop, simply beyond human comprehension; residents’ fears of the date somehow manifested the earthquake; millions of people stomping out of their buildings during the commemorative evacuation upset the tectonic plates. But, above all, held the idea that Mexico City’s residents were justified in their fears: 19 September no longer belonged to humans, and the city had been set adrift in the time of Earth. Though the three 19 September tremors are not formally defined as an aftershock sequence, for some residents, it feels as if ‘after’ will never begin.

We are currently in a moment described as ‘the Anthropocene’, an epoch in which the actions of some humans register at the geological scale through traces of anthropogenic matter, such as nuclear radiation, plastics and carbon emissions. From this vantage, the future becomes an aftereffect of human action. But Mexico City, with its looping geology and its long 19 September, points toward a different relationship between the human and the geological, in which time itself is an effect of Earth.

For the city’s residents, the disaster of 1985 is in the past. The 2017 earthquake is in the past. Even the 2022 event is now in the past. But as these discrete events slip into human memory, all three are folded into Earth’s geological present. In Mexico City’s geological now, the relationship between past, present and future is not preordained, and these temporal geometries contort human history into strange and terrifying shapes. Mexico City’s time is dislocated, its residents stranded after what was prior but still before what might yet come. And 19 September is now, like its own axis of time, a yearly reminder that humans might not be in charge of when ‘after’ begins.

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Essay on Earthquake

• Updated on  
• Apr 1, 2024

Earthquakes are some of the most devastating natural disasters for mankind, nature and property. Just because of this natural occurrence millions of money get washed away in a matter of a few seconds. An earthquake can cause a person huge loss in terms of property damage.  ls In the blog, you will read about earthquakes and their types and read several essays about them. 

Table of Contents

• 1 What is an Earthquake?
• 2 Types of Earthquake
• 3 Essay on Earthquake (200 Words)
• 4 Essay on Earthquake (300 Words)
• 5 Essay on Earthquake (400 Words)

What is an Earthquake?

When the earth’s surface moves suddenly, this phenomenon is called an Earthquake. Earthquakes are known as one of the deadliest natural disasters which can occur. With this, a huge amount of loss of property can be caused.  

Types of Earthquake

There are various types of earthquakes which can occur. While some are silent there are others which come under the severe category. Most of the dangerous earthquakes are unpredictable. It can cause irreversible damage to both humankind and property. Here are the types of earthquakes.

• Tectonic : Waves caused because of the activity of the tectonic plates under the surface of the earth causes this earthquake.
• Volcanic : Tremors caused because of the volcanic activity causes this earthquake.
• Collapse : These are the earthquake that occur in mines and caverns.
• Explosive : These Earthquakes almost always occur due to the testing of nuclear weapons.

Essay on Earthquake (200 Words)

The Devastating Impact of Earthquakes on Humans

Earthquakes are calamities caused by the abrupt release of energy in the Earth’s crust, which causes the ground to shake. Throughout history, they have been accountable for great havoc and human casualties.

The main cause of earthquakes is the movement of tectonic plates. These plates can move in three different directions: towards each other (convergent borders), apart (divergent boundaries), or past each other (transform boundaries). When enough tension and pressure accumulate along these limits, it is finally released as seismic waves, which result in earthquakes.

Earthquakes can have terrible effects. They cause the collapse of structures such as buildings, bridges, and infrastructure, which causes casualties and damage to property. Landslides and tsunamis may be brought on by ground trembling, which would exacerbate the damage. Earthquakes can interrupt vital services like electricity, transit, and water supply, causing long-term suffering for the populations they affect.

Early warning systems and building codes are crucial for minimising the effects of earthquakes. Governments and communities should invest in infrastructure that is earthquake-resistant and conduct drills in order to be prepared for such disasters. Education on earthquake preparedness is essential to make sure that people are aware of how to react when one occurs.

Although we cannot prevent earthquakes, we may lessen their devastation by being prepared and building robust infrastructure. The safety of communities that are susceptible to these unforeseen disasters is our shared duty.

Essay on Earthquake (300 Words)

Due to changes in the Earth’s surface, two natural disasters—earthquakes and volcanoes—occur. It is said that there is no involvement of man behind these earthquakes. However, there is a theory that both earthquakes and volcanoes are correlated.  It is also to be noted that earthquakes, which act as a warning indication of an imminent volcano eruption are more common in volcanic zones. 

When an earthquake occurs, the earth is usually shaken. This is because of the tectonic plates which cause this movement. These spheres are situated beneath the surface of the Earth. There are sometimes instances that volcanic eruptions may follow these earthquakes which may lead to volcanic movements. There are several types of earthquakes which have left a terrible amount of damage. 

The movement of magma is what causes volcanic earthquakes, sometimes referred to as volcano-tectonic earthquakes. The pressure and changes brought about by this movement eventually result in volcanic earthquakes by altering the rock surrounding the lava. These earthquakes have a reputation for wreaking havoc, including building uprooting, ground cracking, and ground deformation.

Both earthquakes and volcanoes have the potential to cause significant damage to humanity. Despite their greatest efforts, scientists have not been able to forecast the time or date of either of these natural disasters. People who live in earthquake- and volcano-prone regions must be on guard, ready to deal with these hazards, and should respond calmly and sensibly if such a catastrophe arises.

Essay on Earthquake (400 Words)

Magnum or tectonic plates moving beneath the surface of the Earth is what causes earthquakes. They can differ in time, severity, and other aspects. Different classifications have been used to categorise earthquakes. Depending on what kind they are, they have different effects.

Types of Earthquakes 

• Tectonic Earthquake 

A tectonic earthquake results from the breaking of the Earth’s crust as a result of pressure being applied to rocks and tectonic plates.

This mild earthquake frequently occurs in the same region that was struck by a strong earthquake a few hours, days, or weeks earlier.

• Volcanic Earthquake 

It is an earthquake that happens as a result of both volcanic activity and tectonic factors.

Violent earthquakes can inflict massive destruction, while mild earthquakes are innocuous. During this natural disaster, many people die, many others are hurt, and many homes and other buildings are destroyed.

A hazardous natural disaster, earthquakes have devastated many areas of the world. Since scientists cannot correctly foresee its appearance, it cannot be avoided.

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A. An earthquake occurs when the strain energy stored in the Earth’s crust suddenly releases, causing waves of shaking to propagate outward from the earthquake source.

A. The abrupt release of energy from a specific location of the Earth’s crust causes earthquakes.

We hope this blog provided you with all the necessary information about earthquakes and how are they caused. To discover more articles like this one consult the study abroad experts at Leverage Edu

Malvika Chawla

Malvika is a content writer cum news freak who comes with a strong background in Journalism and has worked with renowned news websites such as News 9 and The Financial Express to name a few. When not writing, she can be found bringing life to the canvasses by painting on them.

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Essay on earthquake: top 10 essays on earthquake.

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Here is a compilation of essays on ‘Earthquake’ for class 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12. Find paragraphs, long and short essays on ‘Earthquake’ especially written for school and college students.

Essay on Earthquake

Essay Contents:

• Essay on the Effects of Earthquake

Essay # 2. Causes of Earthquake:

There are many causes for earthquakes. Among them tectonic movement of the earth, volcanic eruption, icefall and landslide are the main ones.

Tectonic Movement :

The material of the interior of the earth gradually contract due to loss of heat by radiation. As a result of this, some tectonic forces (tensional and compressional forces) are produced which shake the surface. These forces are mainly responsible for the formation of Fold Mountains and rift valleys. That is why, the earthquakes occur more frequently in the regions of Fold Mountain.

Volcanic Eruption :

During volcanic eruptions lava, ashes and steams come out with an enormous force. These cause earthquakes on the surrounding areas of the volcano.

Sometimes large blocks of ice fall into the valleys from a snow capped mountain. Such a fall may cause a minor earthquake.

Landslide :

In mining area sometimes a large portion of land falls into the vacant space below and causes earthquake of minor nature.

The other causes of earthquakes may be due to the various reasons depending upon their intensity.

The following are the major causes:

i. Superficial movements.

ii. Volcanic eruption.

iii. Faulting and folding.

iv. Earthquakes due to other causes.

Earthquakes due to superficial movements:

The feeble earthquakes are caused due to the superficial movements such as dynamic agencies operating upon the earth’s surface.

(i) The dashing of waves cause vibration along seashore.

(ii) Water descending along high waterfalls.

(iii) The snow falling (avalanche) down from high altitude causes ground vibration.

(iv) The movement of locomotive and working of heavy machinery produces feeble vibration, along the railway tracks and in industrial areas.

Earthquakes caused due to volcanic eruption:

Some of the volcanoes may also produce earthquakes such earthquakes are generally feeble or severe.

Earthquakes caused due to folding and faulting:

The earthquakes caused due to folding/faulting are more disastrous. They are known as tectonic earthquakes and directly or indirectly change the very structural features of the earth’s crust.

Earthquakes caused due to other causes:

Atomic minerals disintegrate emanating α (alpha), β (beta), ϒ (gamma) rays due to radioactivity or due to bombarding. This produces enormous amount of heat and energy within the crust of the earth, which may also initiate very severe earthquakes.

Atomic tests:

Atomic tests conducted in earth’s crust or oceans, which have become a common thing now-a-days, release enormous energy on account of sudden explosion, which follows initiation of earthquakes.

Rocks burst and blasting in the deep under mines generally initiates earthquake tremors.

Essay # 4. Prediction of Earthquakes :

The precise prediction about earthquake calamity is elusive though it is not impossible, since for human grey matter sky is the limit. Recently, the frequency of earthquake calamities in the region has attracted the attention of the scientists all over the world.

It has been observed that earthquake may occur and reoccur at the same places and new places but they do not have any regular scale or frequency. The scientists know that elastic strain is piling up along SAF (San Andreas Fault) since 1906, but they are unable to forecast the exact day, time and place.

In about half of the cases, just before the rocks reach the rupture point to announce the event, small foreshocks announce hours, days or even months before the climax shock, that stress has become critical. The long series of post event tremors indicate adjustments.

Sometimes, the break may be as large as the major shock. Unusual animal behaviour, fluctuations of ground water level in wells and springs and variation in the discharge of springs are the phenomena closely related to the development of fractures.

In China, about 90 per cent of the country is lying on the young and restless crust. Chinese have successfully employed most of the precursors in predicting major disasters and have specially mastered the art of closely monitoring and analysing normal behaviour of animals to forecast earthquakes.

The Haicheng earthquake of February 1975, of 7.3 magnitude, destroyed 90 per cent of the structures, but without loss of life due to timely evacuation of the population of nearly a million. There is evidence that full moon and associated high tides, excessive precipitation and sharp biometric gradient changes, and particularly another quake elsewhere act as ‘trigger’ for earthquake.

Essay # 5. Facts about Earthquakes :

I. Earthquakes do not kill people, structurally unsound buildings can do.

II. There is no foolproof mechanism or technology in the world to predict quakes.

III. Himalayas could be ‘overdue’ for a great earthquake, though no one knows when and where these will occur.

IV. Active thrust faults exist all across foothills of northern India, the north-east and into northern Pakistan.

V. The subcontinent is sitting on the highly seismic Indian plate, with some major fault lines. In fact, there is no safe zone in India.

VI. Of late, the Indian plate boundary has become very active. It is on gradual move, pushing against the Eurasian plate by 4-5cm every year.

VII. All the plates of India should have a disaster management authority to deal with any eventuality.

VIII. Building of laws formulated after 2001 Bhuj earthquake to ensure the construction of quake-proof houses have not been implemented by any state government.

IX. India is among the few countries with no regulatory mechanism to control building activities.

X. Tremors of the Muzzafarbad quake were felt as far as west Bengal.

XI. Disasters have left the 800 years old Qutub Minar with slight tilt, but it has survived several quakes in its life time.

Essay # 6. Classification of Earthquakes :

The earthquakes are classified on number of bases. Of these the depth of FOCUS, the cause, the intensity and magnitude of earthquakes are very important.

1. Classification based on depth of Focus:

Accordingly the earthquakes are termed as:

i. Shallow:

When the focus lies within 60 km.

ii. Intermediate:

When its focus lies within 60 to 300 km from the surface.

iii. Deep seated:

When the focus lies beyond the 300 km depth.

2. Classification based on origin:

The earthquakes are broadly classified into Tectonic and Non- Tectonic types. The tectonic earthquakes are directly related to the movements of crystal block along faults. They are generally very severe and area affected is often very great.

The non-tectonic type includes earthquakes due to number of causes such as:

i. Volcanic eruptions.

ii. Collapse of underground caverns.

iii. Superficial movement like landslides, etc.

3. A third way to classify the earthquakes is on the basis of their intensity, which is defined by the effects or degree of damage that an earthquake produces on the structure and features of the earth.

A numbers of scales of intensity have been suggested.

Some of them are:

i. Rossifeerets scale, and

ii. Mercale scale.

Richter’s scale:

This scale of intensity is adopted internationally. Charles F. Richter, an American Seismologist, devised the earthquake intensity scale. This is based in the total amount of energy released during an earthquake. The energy is called ‘magnitude’. The magnitude is calculated mathematically using the amount and duration of ground vibration/tremors as recorded by seismograph.

Essay # 7. Record of Earthquakes :

Seismograph:

The instrument used for recording the vibrations of the earth crust is known as ‘seismograph’.

The vibrations are recorded on a strip of paper or photograph film and the diagram is produced as shown:

Most seismographs contain a heavy weight suspended from a support, which is attached to bedrock. When waves from a distant earthquake reach the instrument the inertia of the weight keeps it stationary while the earth and support vibrate.

The movement of the earth in relation to the stationary weight is recorded on a rotating drum. Some seismographs detect horizontal motion while others detect vertical motion. The traces of the earthquake waves are usually recorded on a moving photographic paper as a series of zigzag lines.

With the help of seismograph the distance between the recording station and the epicentre is located or determined.

Essay # 8. Seismic Waves Produced during Earthquake :

At the time of earthquake three types of waves are produced from the focus Seismic waves are of three types—P waves, S waves and L waves.

Surface waves or L waves are responsible for causing earthquakes while the importance P and S waves are in study of earth’s interior. P and S waves travel through the interior of the earth and are reflected and refracted as they enter core and mantle layers.

P waves or Primary waves:

These are compressional waves, which cause the material of rock to vibrate in longitudinal direction. The primary waves travel faster, therefore, they reach the seismic station first.

They pass through solid as well as liquid media. The velocity of P waves from 5.5 to 13 km per second. These waves are also called as Push waves and are similar to Sound waves.

S waves or Secondary waves:

These are shear waves, which are transverse in nature, whose velocity is less than P waves. (The velocity of these waves varies from 3 to 7 km per second). The S waves travel through solids only and do not pass through liquid media.

L waves or Surface waves:

When primary and secondary waves reach the earth’s surface they are converted into longitudinal wave. L waves travel along the surface and cause earthquakes. They are traverse in nature and their velocity is much less than P and S waves (velocity varies from 4 km to 4.3 km per second.  

Essay # 9. Earthquakes Resisting Structures :

To build earthquake-resisting structure it is very essential to determine the probable intensity and magnitude in the concerned area. The history and record of previous earthquake and the knowledge of geology of the area are helpful in this connection.

i. Perfectly designed steel framed or reinforced ferro concrete structure possesses high degree of resistance from damage.

ii. It is recommended that in soft grounds where soil-bearing capacity is very poor, a concrete raft- foundation should be adopted for structures.

iii. The height of large building should not exceed 100 ft. The heavy loads near the top, like heavy stone work in coping and water tanks should be avoided.

iv. Bridges with screw pile foundation stand better to the shocks, than that of bridges with brick arches, and girder supported on stone work piers.

v. In house construction light roof (Low density concrete) and polymer construction material are recommended.

vi. Walls constructed in cement with wet bricks work bonded are essential.

vii. Careful planning can ensure that the streets are wide in relation to the height of buildings. Many of the deaths caused during earthquakes are due to the collapse of tall buildings into narrow streets.

viii. Reinforced concrete houses are relatively stable. Doors and windows are provided in alternate positions.

ix. The most secure house is one that will move as a unit.

x. The light weight material such as wood, hard board and light weight fire proof polymer products are employed in the construction of residential building particularly in strong seismic zones as found in Japan.

xi. The main aim of the engineer is to design and construct buildings, bridges and dams in seismic zones considering seismic co-efficient of the locality in such a way that they can minimise loss of life during an earthquake.

Essay # 10. Effects of Earthquake :

1. In cities seismic waves disrupt underground service such as water, gas pipelines, bursts causing fire.

2. Roads are fissured, railway lines are twisted, dams and bridges are destroyed, electrical transmission is snapped causing short circuit of electricity and out-break of fire hazards.

3. Buildings are damaged and people get frightened resulting in loss of life and property.

4. Permanent tilting of landmass may occur in certain areas, landslides may occur in hill regions.

5. Rivers change their courses; fissures are opened up in the ground, which may cause springs.

6. Earthquakes occurring below the ocean floor may cause heavy damage to coastal areas.

Various changes take place on the surface of the earth as a result of earthquake. Some areas may subside or rise-up due to earthquakes. The earthquakes may also bring about a change in surface drainage by causing landslides and damming of rivers. This leads to flood or formation of lakes in the upper reaches of the rivers.

Sometimes large areas may be raised up above sea level so that they become plains. Sometimes again, a large plain may sink and become part of a sea. Sedimentary rock layers may be folded by the pressure exerted by the earthquakes. Devastating sea waves are also caused by the earth tremors.

They often cause great loss to the coastal areas. Although earthquakes are generally disastrous, they sometimes do constructional work also. They can create lakes, plains and islands.

The earthquakes of Bihar (1903 and 1934), of Baluchistan (1935), of Tokyo (1923), of Assam (1897 and 1950) and recent earthquakes of Chile, Mexico, Yugoslavia and Iran caused great loss to human lives and property, and brought about many changes to the earth’s surface.

The recent earthquakes of Armenia (1988), Turkey (1999), India (2001), Pakistan-India (2005) and of Iran (1989, 2006) are also worth mentioning. Recently, the earthquake of March 11, 2011 of Japan has completely destroyed the city of FUKUSHIMA and also 4 nuclear reactors.

Related Articles:

• Concept of Seismic Zoning | Seismology | Geology
• Types of Seismic Waves | Seismology | Branches | Geology
• Essay on Earthquakes: Top 5 Essays on Earthquakes | Geography
• Earthquake: Causes, Effects and Distribution of Earthquake

Earthquakes , Essay , Geography , Natural Disasters , Surface Vibration

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The surface of the Earth is made up of tectonic plates that lie beneath both the land and oceans of our planet. The movements of these plates can build mountains or cause volcanoes to erupt. The clash of these plates can also cause violent earthquakes, where Earth’s surface shakes. Earthquakes are more common in some parts of the world than others, because some places, like California, sit on top of the meeting point, or fault, of two plates. When those plates scrape against each other and cause an earthquake, the results can be deadly and devastating.

Learn more about earthquakes with this curated collection of classroom resources.

Geology, Geography, Physical Geography

Earthquake Cause and Effect Essay Sample

Earthquakes are one of the worst and deadliest natural disasters that can occur. They are due to different factors and leave behind after-effects in their wake. An earthquake is the sudden release of strain energy in the crust of the planet’s surface, which will result in shaking that resonates outwards from the source. Simply, it is the sudden shaking of the Earth’s surface and can also be called a quake, tremor, or tremblor.

Earthquakes come in different sizes, as some are weak and cannot be felt, while others are violent and can destroy cities. The frequency, size, and type of quakes experienced are called seismicity. Earthquakes can be a result of volcanic action too. Furthermore, they have various effects that disturb lives and property.

The Valdivia Earthquake, also known as the Great Chilean, is the most powerful earthquake ever recorded. It occurred on the 22 nd of May, 1960, with studies placing it between 9.4 and 9.6 on the moment magnitude scale. The main cause of the quake was tension released by the Nazca plate under the South American plate. The earthquake lasted for about 10 minutes and resulted in tsunamis that affected Hawaii, southern Chile, eastern New Zealand, the Aleutian Islands, Japan, southeast Australia, and the Philippines.

Earthquakes are one of the most destructive and fascinating natural disasters that can cause a huge amount of destruction, injuries, and even death, but what makes them so dangerous? In this earthquake cause and effect essay sample, we will attempt to answer this question and explore why earthquakes occur and what effects they can have on society and the environment. Earthquakes are caused by sudden movement of the earth’s crust resulting from a release of energy from the Earth’s interior, and can be triggered by many different things including human activities such as mining and construction. Understanding the processes behind earthquakes can help individuals and organizations make better plans for future mitigation and adaptation if an earthquake were to occur. Additionally, students can buy a coursework to learn how to plan for an earthquake and develop better understanding of how to prepare for and cope with natural disasters.

Causes of Earthquakes

The main cause of the quakes is the sudden release of stress from the faults in the Earth’s crust. In this guide on how to do a cause and effect essay , we will cover the causes of an earthquake. As the continuous motion of layers transpires, it causes a gradual build-up of pressure on both sides of a fault. This happens because of plate boundaries that are moving. Once the stress is too significant, it is released in a shaky movement. So, how are earthquakes caused? Here are the factors causing quakes.

Tectonic Movements of the Earth

One of the leading causes of an earthquake is movement from the tectonics. This is a shift of the planes making up the crust. Our planet consists of about a dozen major plates and several minor ones and is constantly changing.

The tectonic plates frequently move slowly, but sometimes, they get stuck because of friction. When the stress on the crust becomes more significant than the friction, an earthquake happens to release energy. This brings about a shaky feeling in steps through the planet’s crust. Little movement from the tectonic caused big things such as the happenings in the Ring of Fire.

Seismicity Ripples

Seismic waves are one of the causes of earthquakes. These are elastic ripples generated by an impulse, like an earthquake. The energy from the fault in the crust of the planet will radiate outward in different directions through seismicity. Think of it as ripples on a pond. As the ripples move through the surface, they shake the floor and anything on it. These can be in the form of ripples, which is when an earthquake happens more than once. North Carolina earthquake events occur because of seismicity, although they don’t have significant damage.

Compressions in the Crust of the Earth

Compression in the crust happens when plate tectonics are pushed together. The crust will become shorter and thicker, and depending on how it reacts to the force, it can lead to an earthquake. Due to compression, many quakes that occur in Australia are caused by these shifts along faults. Also, the main cause of the Northridge earthquake 1994 was the compressions on the planet’s surface.

Volcanic Eruptions

Volcanic eruptions are one of the less likely causes of an earthquake, depending on the volcano that erupts. The earthquake will be triggered when an explosion of an explosive volcano. These ripples have a wider effect than volcanic eruptions when they trigger an earthquake. In the case of volcanic eruptions, around 20 miles of the region around the volcano will be affected when it erupts. The largest volcanic tremor took place under Mount St. Helens in 1981 , with an intensity of 5.5.

Disturbances on the Surface

In general, an earthquake can be caused by disturbances on the surface. Technology advancement is one of the popular cause/effect essay topics , which is to some extent responsible for catastrophes like an earthquake. Humanity builds skyscrapers, constructs dams, and gets water from underground. Dams and reservoirs are known to trigger earthquakes, especially when a dam structure fails.

For instance, the 2008 happening in Sichuan , China, which killed about 70,000 persons, was triggered by the nearby Zipping Dam construction. Another disturbance is groundwater extraction, as this can destabilize an existing fault. Hydraulic fracking is a method of extracting natural resources. It works when shale formations underneath are injected with a mixture of chemicals and water at high pressure. Fracking has had such an impact on the environment causing earthquakes.

Big buildings and skyscrapers can also add significant pressure on the Earth’s surface and crack rudimentary rocks.

Writing a college admission essay can be a difficult and intimidating process. Fortunately, there are college admission essay services that can help. These services can help to ensure that the essay meets the requirements of the college. Ultimately, college admission essay service provide students with the resources needed to create a persuasive and effective essay that will make a lasting impression on college admissions committees.

Effects of Earthquakes

When an earthquake happens, it leaves behind five primary outcomes and fires, a significant secondary impact of quakes. The effects of earthquakes on the Earth are often devastating, with people getting killed and injured, buildings getting destroyed, and the emotional and mental health of those affected. That’s why the investigation of this topic is so crucial in minimizing the adverse outcomes.

If you need an essay discussing this or any similar topic, our custom essay writing services can help you get the job done quickly and professionally. Now, let’s get to the main repercussions of quakes.

Ground Shaking

One of the most negative effects of earthquakes is surface shaking. During this time, buildings can be damaged, humans and animals will not be able to stand up or move around, and objects can be tossed around regardless of how big they are. Lives are taken in earthquakes but not directly by the shaking. Instead, it is caused by shaking, like buildings collapsing or getting hit by large objects.

The shaking of unstable slopes and direct blowout during an earthquake can lead to a landslide. Landslides are harmful effects of earthquakes and can damage buildings, tumbling hilltop homes, and block roads and transport lines. When a landslide happens, parts of the planet slide down and block an area. It can affect transportation after the earthquake, causing increased expenditure and leading to injuries and death for people there.

Surface Rupture

Another effect of quakes is surface breaking, which happens when the earthquake breaks the surface. As the earthquake occurs along a fault-line, it breaks through the Earth’s surface and can damage roads, pipelines, railway lines, tunnels, and airport runways. They will be damaged in the aftermath of an earthquake. An example of surface damage during an earthquake was the 1906 quake in California. The main cause of the quake was a slip of the San Andreas fault. The San Andreas fault is a major fracture of the planet’s crust.

Although this is a less common effect, an earthquake causes a tsunami. Tsunamis are water or tidal shakes that cause grave danger to places around the world, especially those in the Pacific Northwest region. An earthquake can cause the seafloor to move vertically apart from the normal floor. This will shake up the ocean and come in a series of floods to the beach. Tsunamis can move more than 700 kilometers per hour, causing flooding. It can damage properties and lead to death and injury too. Places close to the ocean are often subjected to tsunamis during an earthquake.

Liquefaction

Liquefaction is one of the outcomes of an earthquake that happens on the unconsolidated surface. When sediment grains are made to float in groundwater, the soil will lose all its solidity, and this is liquefaction. Tremors and earthquakes can cause mud and sand to spray over a couple of meters, posing a danger to buildings, train lines, gas lines, roads, and airport runways. Buildings can tip over and sink because of the liquefied soils, as occurred in the 1964 Niigata earthquake in Japan. Even septic tanks and gas tanks can float to the surface. Liquefaction after earthquakes leads to damages worth millions of dollars.

Earthquakes can have devastating consequences, so learning more about their causes and effects can be extremely beneficial. Recently, scientists have made tremendous progress in understanding the mechanisms behind earthquakes. To develop a deeper understanding of earthquakes, students may be required to write a coursework for me exploring the causes and effects of them. For example, they can focus on exploring tectonic plates and how they move and affect the ground, as well as the effect of natural conditions like weather and climate on their development. Additionally, the effects of an earthquake, such as structural damage and the resulting landslides, tsunamis and fires, can be further investigated in other science studies.

This essay has highlighted the cause and effect of earthquakes.  Earthquakes are severe natural disasters caused by shifts in the crust of the Earth. Compressions on the planet’s surface, human disturbances like skyscrapers and dams, and tectonics moving can cause earthquakes.  When they occur, consequences like landslides, ruptures, tsunamis, and more will follow. Some of the top countries prone to quakes are China, Indonesia, Turkey, Peru, Iran, Turkey, the United States, Japan, and Italy. China has gone through 157 earthquakes between 1900 and 2016. People living in these areas have precautions taken to protect themselves from injury during an earthquake.

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Essay on Earthquake

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An earthquake is a natural phenomenon that manifests the dynamic nature of our planet. It is a seismic event characterized by the shaking of the ground caused by the sudden release of energy in the Earth’s lithosphere. This energy creates seismic waves that propagate through the Earth’s surface, leading to the ground shaking that we perceive as an earthquake. This essay delves into the causes of earthquakes, their effects, and the measures that can be taken to mitigate their impact, aiming to provide a comprehensive overview suitable for students participating in an essay writing competition.

The Causes of Earthquakes

The primary cause of earthquakes is the tectonic movements in the Earth’s crust. The Earth’s lithosphere is divided into several tectonic plates that float on the semi-fluid asthenosphere beneath. These plates are constantly moving, albeit very slowly, due to the convective currents in the mantle. Earthquakes occur when the stress accumulated along the edges of these tectonic plates is released suddenly. This stress can build up due to several factors:

• Plate Tectonics: Most earthquakes are triggered by the movement of tectonic plates, either by sliding past one another, colliding, or moving apart.
• Volcanic Activity: Volcanic earthquakes are a result of the movement of magma within the Earth, leading to tremors.
• Human Activities: Human activities such as mining, reservoir-induced seismicity due to the filling of large reservoirs behind dams, and even the extraction or injection of fluids into the Earth can trigger earthquakes.

Measuring Earthquakes

Earthquakes are measured using two main scales: the Richter Scale and the Mercalli Intensity Scale. The Richter Scale quantifies the energy released by an earthquake, using a logarithmic scale where each whole number increase corresponds to a tenfold increase in measured amplitude and roughly 31.6 times more energy release. The Mercalli Intensity Scale, on the other hand, measures the effects of an earthquake at different locations, taking into account the human experiences and structural damages.

Effects of Earthquakes

The impact of an earthquake can range from negligible to catastrophic, depending on its magnitude, depth, and the area’s vulnerability. Some of the significant effects include:

• Ground Shaking: The most immediate and noticeable effect of an earthquake is the shaking of the ground. This shaking can range from mild to violent, causing buildings, bridges, and infrastructure to sway or vibrate. Severe ground shaking can lead to structural damage and collapse.
• Surface Rupture: In some earthquakes, the Earth’s surface can rupture along the fault line where the earthquake occurred. This can result in visible cracks and displacements of the ground, damaging roads, pipelines, and buildings.
• Building and Infrastructure Damage: Earthquakes can cause extensive damage to buildings, homes, and infrastructure, particularly in areas with poor construction standards or older structures that are not earthquake-resistant. Collapsed buildings can lead to casualties and destruction.
• Landslides: The shaking of the ground during an earthquake can trigger landslides on steep slopes, burying homes, roads, and people under debris. Landslides can be especially dangerous in hilly or mountainous regions.
• Tsunamis: Underwater earthquakes, particularly those occurring along tectonic plate boundaries, can generate tsunamis. These large ocean waves can inundate coastal areas, causing widespread destruction and loss of life.
• Aftershocks: Following the main earthquake, there are often aftershocks, which are smaller seismic events that continue to shake the affected region. Aftershocks can hamper rescue and recovery efforts and further damage weakened structures.
• Fires: Earthquakes can rupture gas lines and damage electrical systems, leading to fires. The destruction of fire-fighting infrastructure and limited access to water can make it challenging to control these fires.
• Soil Liquefaction: In certain soil types, the intense shaking from an earthquake can cause the ground to temporarily lose its strength and behave like a liquid. This phenomenon, known as soil liquefaction, can result in the sinking or tilting of structures.
• Infrastructure Disruption: Earthquakes can disrupt essential infrastructure, such as transportation networks, water supply systems, and communication lines. This can hinder emergency response efforts and recovery operations.
• Psychological Impact: Earthquakes can have a profound psychological impact on individuals and communities. The fear and trauma associated with the event, as well as the loss of homes and loved ones, can lead to long-term emotional and mental health challenges.
• Economic Consequences: The economic impact of earthquakes can be significant, affecting local industries, businesses, and employment. Rebuilding and recovery efforts often require substantial financial resources.
• Environmental Effects: Earthquakes can have environmental consequences, such as the release of toxins from damaged industrial facilities, contamination of water sources, and disruptions to ecosystems.
• Human Casualties: Earthquakes can result in injuries and loss of life, depending on factors like the population density of the affected area, the quality of building construction, and the preparedness of the community.
• Displacement of Communities: In the aftermath of a severe earthquake, many people may be displaced from their homes, leading to temporary shelters and overcrowded living conditions.
• Long-Term Recovery: Recovery and reconstruction efforts following a significant earthquake can take years or even decades. Communities must rebuild infrastructure, homes, and businesses while addressing the physical and emotional scars left by the event.

Mitigation and Preparedness

While earthquakes cannot be prevented, the risk they pose can be significantly reduced through effective mitigation and preparedness measures:

• Building Codes: Implementing and enforcing strict building codes that require structures to withstand seismic forces can greatly reduce the damage and casualties during an earthquake.
• Early Warning Systems: Advances in seismology have led to the development of early warning systems that can provide precious seconds or even minutes of warning before the seismic waves reach populated areas.
• Public Education and Preparedness: Educating the public about what to do before, during, and after an earthquake can save lives and reduce injuries. This includes conducting regular earthquake drills, preparing emergency kits, and developing evacuation plans.
• Research and Monitoring: Continuous research and monitoring of seismic activity can help in understanding earthquake mechanisms and potentially in predicting significant seismic events in the future.

In conclusion, Earthquakes are a powerful reminder of the dynamic nature of our planet. They bring to light the forces that continuously shape the Earth’s surface, often with profound impacts on human societies. Understanding the causes and effects of earthquakes is crucial for developing effective strategies to mitigate their impact. Through advancements in science and technology, along with effective public policy and community preparedness, we can reduce the risk posed by earthquakes and enhance our resilience to these inevitable natural events. As we continue to learn from each seismic event, it becomes increasingly possible to safeguard our communities, minimize loss, and navigate the challenges posed by these tremors of our planet

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Earthquakes shake the ground surface, can cause buildings to collapse, disrupt transport and services, and can cause fires. They can trigger landslides and tsunami.

Earthquakes occur mainly as a result of plate tectonics, which involves blocks of the Earth moving about the Earth's surface. The blocks of rock move past each other along a fault. Smaller earthquakes, called foreshocks, may precede the main earthquake, and aftershocks may occur after the main earthquake. Earthquakes are mainly confined to specific areas of the Earth known as seismic zones, which coincide mainly with ocean trenches, mid-ocean ridges, and mountain ranges.

The point of origin of an earthquake is called the focus. The epicentre is the point on the Earth's surface directly above the focus. Most earthquake foci are within a few tens of kilometres of the Earth's surface. Earthquakes less than 70 km deep are classified as shallow-focus. Intermediate-focus earthquakes are 70-300 km deep, and deep-focus earthquakes more than 300 km deep. Shallow-focus earthquakes occur in all of the Earth's seismic zones, but intermediate- and deep-focus earthquakes are almost exclusively associated with seismic zones near ocean trenches.

The destructiveness of an earthquake depends on the size, the depth (shallow ones are more destructive) and the location. Earthquake size can be stated in terms of the damage caused (the intensity) or the amount of ground motion and the energy released by the earthquake (related to the Richter magnitude).

Essay on Earthquake For Students and Children in 1000 Words

In this article you will read an essay on earthquake for students and children. It includes meaning, types, causes, effects, and management of earthquakes.

Table of Contents

Essay on Earthquake (1000 Words)

One of these natural disasters that can do a lot of damage to the ecosystem is an earthquake.

What is an Earthquake?

Types of earthquake.

There are mainly four different types of earthquakes, namely, tectonic, volcanic, collapse, and explosive.

Tectonic Earthquake

Collapse earthquake, volcanic earthquake.

As per the name, the volcanic earthquake is caused by volcanic activity. Just like the collapse earthquake, these are also of weaker magnitude. A light magnitude earthquake due to the explosion of magma from the volcanoes.

Causes of Earthquake

Depending on the depth of the epicenter, location, and magnitude, the seismic waves have the potential to tear the surface of the Earth, thus damaging buildings and other natural ecosystems. The areas where this activity occurs are usually known as geological faults. 

Effects of Earthquake

The damage can block roads and bridges and can cause catastrophic problems for a few months. Earthquakes can also affect electric power and gas lines and also have a chance to cause fire breakouts.

When an earthquake occurs beneath the ocean, it can possibly cause a tsunami. The waves of the tsunami bring a lot of water and are strong enough to destroy anything in their path. 

Disaster Management in Earthquake

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Essay on Earthquake in English for Children and Students

Table of Contents

Essay on Earthquake: The earthquake is one of the most terrible natural disasters. Its source can be traced to the early days of earth formation. It is responsible for a great loss of life and property. It is, therefore, a great problem for mankind. The word earthquake is derived from the Greek words, ‘earth’ meaning ground and ‘quake’ meaning shaking or trembling. An earthquake, therefore, is a shaking or trembling of the earth.

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Earthquake occurs due to disturbance in the tectonic plates that lie under the surface of Earth. Earthquakes may be brief and mild or big and destructive. Our planet has suffered several severe and mild earthquakes since centuries. Earthquakes are mostly brief but can cause mass destruction within seconds. People around the world have suffered immensely due to earthquakes in the past.

Long and Short Essay on Earthquake in English

Here are essay on Earthquake of varying lengths to help you with the topic in your exam. You can select any Earthquake essay as per you need:

Short Essay on Earthquake in 200 words

Earthquakes occur suddenly, usually without any warning signs, and can cause huge destruction. Though there is a separate branch of science referred to as seismology that study about earthquakes and tries to predicts their occurrence however, it doesn’t help in determining the exact time or date of this natural calamity.

Scientists around the world constantly try to predict the occurrence of earthquakes. While seismology department does warn against Earthquake in certain areas in future however it is unable to find out as to when exactly it would occur.

As it is said, little knowledge is dangerous hence lame predictions about earthquakes do more harm to the people than good. People begin to live in constant fear of earthquake. Panic among people living in such areas can be seen clearly as they can hardly do much about safeguarding themselves from the possible destruction caused due to this natural calamity.

However, earthquakes aren’t always severe and destructive. At times, these are small and mild. Sometimes, these are so mild that people do not even get to know that these have occurred. However, even at the slightest of tremors, it is suggested to evacuate the buildings and come out in an open area to ensure safety.

Essay on Earthquake in 300 words

Earthquakes and volcanoes are two natural calamities that occur due to the changes in the surface of Earth. Man has little or just no role in bringing about these natural disasters. Earthquakes and volcanoes are said to be interrelated. It has been observed that volcanic regions are more prone to earthquakes that often serve as a warning sign of an impending volcano.

Earthquake: Earthquake is basically the shaking of the Earth. Earthquakes either occur due to the movement of tectonic plates under the Earth’s surface or because of the movement of magma in volcanoes. The ones caused due to magma movements may be followed by volcanic eruptions. Earthquakes can be weak as well as violent. While the weak volcanoes are hardly felt, the violent ones can result in the devastation of big buildings and huge loss of life. Numerous earthquakes have occurred in different parts of the world causing severe destructions.

Volcanoes: Volcano is the eruption of hot lava from the surface of Earth. It occurs when the Earth’s crust ruptures. Hot lava, poisonous gases and volcanic ash come out by way of volcanic eruptions and can cause vast destruction. Different types of volcanoes include super volcanoes, sub-glacial volcanoes, underwater volcanoes and mud volcanoes.

What is Volcanic Earthquake?

Volcanic earthquake also known as volcano tectonic earthquake is caused due to the movement of magma. This movement exerts pressure and causes changes in the rock around the magma and this eventually leads to volcanic earthquake. These earthquakes are known to cause major destruction that may include ground deformation, uprooting of buildings and ground cracks.

Both earthquakes and volcanoes may result in severe loss for the mankind. While scientists try their best to predict both of these, they haven’t been successful in determining the time and date for these natural disasters. People living in earthquake and volcano prone areas must stay vigilant and be prepared to face these and should act calmly and wisely if such a problem occurs.

Essay on Earthquake in 400 words

Earthquakes are caused due to the movement of magnum or tectonic plates under the Earth’s surface. They may vary in severity, time and other factors. Earthquakes have been classified into various categories. The effect they cause varies based on their type.

Types of Earthquake

There are different types of earthquakes that have been experienced on our planet. Here is a look at the main types of earthquakes:

• Tectonic Earthquake: A tectonic earthquake is an outcome of the breakage of Earth’s crust because of exertion of pressure on rocks and tectonic plates.
• Aftershock: This is often a mild earthquake that takes place in the same area that has been hit by a severe earthquake few hours, days or weeks before.
• Foreshock: A small earthquake that takes place before a severe earthquake is referred to as a foreshock.
• Explosion Earthquake: This type of earthquake occurs because of explosion of a chemical and nuclear device.
• Volcanic Earthquake: It is an earthquake that occurs due to the combination of tectonic forces and volcanic activities.
• Collapse Earthquake: This type of earthquake is caused due to the explosion of rocks. These are generally mild earthquakes that occur due to mining activities.
• Submarine Earthquake: It is an earthquake that takes place underwater particularly at the bottom of an ocean. It is commonly referred to as Tsunami.

Causes of Earthquake

An earthquake basically is an outcome of the movements of tectonic plates beneath the Earth’s surface. However, these are also caused due to certain other reasons. These are mostly natural reasons however sometimes these can even be man-made. Given below are the various causes of earthquakes:

• Volcanic Eruptions: Volcanic eruptions are a common cause of earthquake. Areas that are faced with frequent volcanic activities are more prone to earthquakes.
• Geological Fault: It occurs because of the displacement of plates from their original position. As the rocks move alongside these planes, it brings about tectonic earthquakes.
• Human Activities: Man is known to influence various natural activities and earthquakes are no exception. Nuclear bombing, building of dams and mining are few such human activities that can cause earthquake.

Effects of Earthquake

Mild earthquakes are harmless however the violent ones can cause mass destruction. Numerous lives are lost, several people are injured and many houses and other buildings are devastated during this natural calamity.

Earthquake is a dangerous natural calamity that has caused huge damage in various parts of the world. It cannot be avoided as the scientists are not able to predict its occurrence accurately.

Also Read: Speech on Earthquake in simple and easy words

Essay on Earthquake in 500 words

Earthquake is a natural calamity which is capable of causing vast destruction and there is no way to stop it from occurring. Our planet has been hit by a number of strong earthquakes of different magnitudes that have led to the loss of many innocent lives and heavy damage to the property. A need for disaster management for earthquake was felt owing to the huge and frequent damage they had been causing around the world.

Earthquake Management

The seismic department studies earthquakes. The department monitors the environment and the activities that occurs under the Earth’s surface in an attempt to predict earthquakes and their severity. However, it has largely failed in predicting the exact date and time of occurrence of the earthquake.

Since it is almost impossible to forecast and avoid the occurrence of earthquakes, we must prepare ourselves to lower the losses caused by these. Japan for instance is highly prone to earthquakes. However, their preparedness to handle this natural calamity ensures little or no damage to property and life in the country.

The recent earthquakes that jolted India have shown how under-prepared we are to handle this natural calamity. A need to build an environment which is earthquake resistant has been felt. Though, this cannot be full proof however efforts in this direction can certainly help bring down the magnitude of losses.

Extensive research is going on in this direction. Builders are being encouraged to build earthquake resistant structures. Special degree in Earthquake Engineering is being imparted to prepare our future generations to tackle this natural disaster smartly. Structural Earthquake Engineering, Geo-technical Earthquake Engineering, Remote Sensing and Seismology are the fields that are being explored and taught.

Do not Panic during an Earthquake

It is but natural to panic during any difficult situation however doing so only worsens the problem. We must thus not panic during earthquake. We should rather act wisely. Here are few things you can do to lower the possibility of disaster:

• Come out of your house/ office/ shop and gather in an open place.
• Do not use elevator. Take the stairs to go down.
• Make sure you are at a safe place as you come out and not somewhere where there is a possibility of falling objects or collapsing building.
• Get under a table or bed if you cannot move out.
• Stay calm and don’t indulge in negative talks.
• Help those caught inside or in need if you can.

Earthquake: Precautions to be taken

People living in earthquake prone areas must stay alert and prepared to handle this natural disaster at all times. Here are certain things that they must keep handy:

• Necessary medicines
• Canned packaged food
• Camp stoves that can be installed outdoors
• Enough drinking water
• Sanitation stock
• Cash/ Debit card/ Credit Card
• Important Certificates/ documents

It is a good idea to prepare a bag that can be carried easily in case of emergency.

The government must take measures to ensure the destruction caused by this natural calamity is lowered. In case of a severe earthquake, the government must take measures to help people who lose their houses and other important belongings. The government must be prepared to handle such an emergency situation efficiently so that people do not suffer further.

Essay on Earthquake in 600 words

Earthquakes occur when the tectonic plates shift and climb over one another. This leads to mountain building referred to as orogeny which is the cause of severe earthquakes. Thus, the tectonic plates that lie under the surface of Earth are responsible for this natural calamity. Just like many other parts of the world, India has also experienced numerous earthquakes in different areas. While some of these have caused serious destruction others have largely gone unnoticed.

Major Earthquakes in India

Our country has suffered from some major earthquakes in the past that have led to severe damage and immense panic among people. Some of the major earthquakes experienced in India are as follows:

The Hindu Kush Earthquake (26 October 2015) : This was a magnitude 7.5 earthquake that caused vast destruction in South Asia. Jammu and Kashmir in India was jolted by this quake and tremors were felt in many other parts of Northern India. With its epicentre in Afghanistan, the quake caused tremendous destruction in the country as well as in its neighbouring country Pakistan. Statistics reveal that 399 people lost their lives and as many as 2539 were injured during this earthquake.

The May 2015 Nepal Earthquake : Yet another severe earthquake in Nepal that led to havoc in India too as strong tremors were felt in various parts of our country including Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Delhi. With its epicentre in Dolakha and Sindhupal Chowk, Nepal it was a 7.3 magnitude earthquake. Considered to be an aftermath of the April 2015 earthquake, it took away 218 lives and injured more than 3200 people.

The April 2015 Nepal Earthquake : This is said to be one of the major earthquakes that has ever occurred in the recent times. It was a 7.8 magnitude earthquake. The epicentre of this earthquake was Gorkha District in Nepal however strong tremors were felt in various parts of India too. It led to the devastation of many buildings and took as many as 9,000 lives. 22,000 people were injured during the event.

Bhuj Earthquake (26 January 2001): This was one of the most devastating natural calamities that ever hit our country. The earthquake with a magnitude of 7.7 lasted for more than 2 minutes and wrecked havoc on the beautiful Indian state of Gujarat. Numerous buildings were devastated as a result of this earthquake. It killed around 20,000 people and injured as many as 167,000 people.

The Latur Earthquake (30 September 1993): The Latur earthquake hit the Indian state of Maharashtra. This 6.2 magnitude earthquake mainly affected the districts of Latur and Osmanabad. It demolished as many as 52 villages in Maharashtra and killed around 10,000 people. As many as 30,000 people were injured during the event.

Uttarkashi Earthquake (2 nd October 1991): The earthquake with a 6.8 magnitude hit Gharwal and Uttarkashi in Uttrakhand. Strong tremors were felt in these two regions and various other parts of Uttar Pradesh. It caused mass destruction. Numerous buildings were wrecked during the event. More than 700 people lost their lives and numerous others became homeless.

Earthquake Prone Areas in India

Almost every part of India has been hit by earthquake at some point or the other. While some areas in the country are highly prone to earthquakes others stand a low chance of being hit by them. Some of the earthquake prone areas in the country include Srinagar, Mumbai, Delhi, Guwahati, Pune, Kolkata, Chennai, Patna, Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram. All these regions have felt strong tremors of earthquake in the past and stand a high chance of experiencing the same in future as well.

India has seen major destruction due to earthquakes. Many buildings have been damaged and several people have lost their lives due to this natural calamity. We wish and pray to God that such strong tremors don’t occur in future.

Essay on Earthquake in 800 words

An earthquake is a tremor that is produced when two surfaces of earth, underneath the surface, slip against each other and release seismic waves. Thus, an earthquake implies a sudden release of energy from within the earth, which takes the form of tremors, generally called earthquake. World over, around fifty thousand earthquakes occur annually, but only about hundred of them are potentially dangerous. Little was understood about them until the 20 th century, when Seismology was introduced as a study of earthquakes. In the following essay we will go through the causes, effects and facts about earthquakes.

Causes of Earthquakes

Earthquakes are caused by the movement or breaking of rocks underneath the surface of earth. Under earth’s surface layers of rocks stay connected to each other. The rocks or plates push each other continuously, but doesn’t move as the forces balance each other.

However, if the rocks break or layers move against each other, seismic waves are produced which reach the surface in form of tremors known as earthquake. Hence earthquake is felt as long as the rocks are rubbing against each other and ceases as soon as the rocks get stuck again. In seismic language, the point immediately below where the rocks break is called the focus and the point immediately above is called the epicenter.

Measurement

The severity of an earthquake is measured in Richter scale. A strong earthquake has a high value on Richter scale while a low earthquake has a lower value.

An earthquake which measures 6 to 7 on Richter scale is potentially damaging to life and property, while the effects of earthquake measuring 4 to 5 on Richter scale could result only in mild tremors or a little structural damage.

There are many effects of earthquake and may include the following; though, they are not limited to the effects mentioned here below-

1) Tremors or Shaking

Shaking of ground is the first effect of earthquake and is also the most damaging one. The severity of shaking; however, depends on the magnitude of earthquake and the distance of the place from the epicenter. An earthquake measuring around 6 or above on Richter scale has an ability to destroy even the most strongest of buildings, depending on their proximity to the epicenter.

2) Ground Rupture

Sometimes, an earthquake measuring high on Richter scale could cause visible rupture in the ground along the fault line. Sometimes, when the earthquake is potentially high on Richter scale, a ground rupture measuring several meters deep and several kilometers long, may result. Such ground ruptures are considerably harmful to significant structures like dams, nuclear power stations and bridges.

Earthquakes can cause forest fires, as tremors force the trees to rub each other, thereby generating heat and sparks. There have been forest fires recorded after earthquakes. Moreover, an earthquake can cause fire in urban areas also, by rupturing electrical lines and damaging electrical protection systems.

4) Landslides

Landslides are the most common aftereffects of earthquake in hilly areas. Shaking of earth displaces the soil on sloppy hills, resulting in a landslide. The landslides sometimes could be potentially more dangerous than the earthquake itself, as they contain debris like trees and rocks, and have a high potential to damage life and property.

Tsunami is the most severe and frightening aftereffect of earthquake. Tsunami is caused when the epicenter of an earthquake lies under the ocean surface. An earthquake in the sea bed results in waves those are not more than a ripple over the epicenter, but as they travel towards the shore, they get bigger, faster and stronger. A wave only measuring 1 meter above the epicenter could measure 100 meters at the shores, resulting in huge loss of life and tremendous damage to the property.

What to do in an Earthquake?

Though the science of studying earthquake has developed significantly, and today it’s possible to forecast an earthquake, even then it might not be possible in every place and situation. Below given are some of the safety precautions you could take when caught in a situation, to save yourself and family from harm.

Situation 1 – Outdoors

If you are outdoors and sense an earthquake, move away from buildings, poles, trees as fast as you can. The greatest danger is immediately outside of a building and near boundaries. When caught outside in an earthquake it’s wise to stand still on a clear ground, away from any structure that could fall upon you.

Situation 2 – Indoors

If you are caught in an earthquake inside a building, the best option for you would be to find some sturdy and strong table or bed and lie down below it, ducking your head under your arms. Stay put in this position until the tremor ceases or help arrives.

Situation 3 – Driving a Vehicle

If you are driving and sense an earthquake, then move as fast as possible from buildings and other high structures and stay inside the vehicle. Even after earthquake, proceed cautiously and avoid bridges if possible, as the tremors might have damaged them.

Earthquakes are a natural phenomenon and despite our knowledge on them, we cannot stop them from occurring; nevertheless, we can always act wisely when caught in the situation, saving our life as well as life of others.

Earthquake Information

An earthquake is a sudden shaking of the ground caused by movements in the Earth’s crust. These movements can happen when rocks underground break or slip along a fault line.

What Causes Earthquakes?

• Tectonic Plates : The Earth’s surface is made up of large pieces called tectonic plates. When these plates move and grind against each other, they can cause earthquakes.
• Volcanic Activity : Sometimes, earthquakes happen near volcanoes due to the movement of magma.

How Do We Measure Earthquakes?

• Richter Scale : Measures the strength of an earthquake. Higher numbers mean stronger earthquakes.
• Moment Magnitude Scale : More detailed, used for large earthquakes to measure their energy.

Effects of Earthquakes

• Shaking : Can cause buildings to collapse, landslides, or even tsunamis.
• Damage : Includes broken roads, destroyed homes, and sometimes injuries or loss of life.

Safety Tips

• Drop, Cover, and Hold On : Protect yourself during shaking by dropping to your knees, covering your head, and holding on to something sturdy.
• Prepare an Emergency Kit : Include water, food, and first aid supplies.
• Have a Plan : Know where to go and how to contact family members after an earthquake.

Conclusion Earthquakes are natural events that can be very powerful and destructive. Understanding them and preparing can help keep you safe and reduce damage.

Essay on Earthquake FAQs

What is called an earthquake.

An earthquake is the shaking of the ground caused by sudden movements in Earth's crust.

What makes an earthquake?

Earthquakes happen when the Earth's plates suddenly move or slide past each other, releasing energy that causes the ground to shake.

What is the topic of an earthquake?

The topic of an earthquake revolves around the shaking and vibrations in the Earth's surface caused by geological movements.

What is the meaning of earthquake in English?

Earthquake in English refers to the shaking or trembling of the ground due to geological forces.

What is the introduction of an earthquake?

An earthquake introduction would cover the basics: how it occurs due to tectonic plate movements, causing shaking or trembling of the ground.

How do you write an earthquake essay?

To write an earthquake essay, start with an introduction explaining what an earthquake is, discuss its causes, effects, and safety measures, and conclude with preventive measures.

What is an earthquake in 150 words?

An earthquake is a sudden shaking of the Earth's surface caused by movements in the Earth's crust. These movements release energy, creating seismic waves that make the ground shake, potentially causing damage to structures and landscapes. Safety measures and preparedness are crucial to mitigate the impact of earthquakes.

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Turkey earthquake: Where did it hit and why was it so deadly?

Tens of thousands of people have been killed and scores more injured by a huge earthquake which struck south-eastern Turkey, near the Syrian border, in the early hours of Monday morning.

The earthquake, which hit near the town of Gaziantep, was closely followed by numerous aftershocks - including one quake which was almost as large as the first.

Why was it so deadly?

The first earthquake was big - it registered as 7.8, classified as "major" on the official magnitude scale. It broke along about 100km (62 miles) of fault line, causing serious damage to buildings near the fault.

Prof Joanna Faure Walker, head of the Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction at University College London, said: "Of the deadliest earthquakes in any given year, only two in the last 10 years have been of equivalent magnitude, and four in the previous 10 years."

But it is not only the power of the tremor that causes devastation.

This incident occurred in the early hours of the morning, when people were inside and sleeping.

The sturdiness of the buildings is also a factor.

Dr Carmen Solana, reader in volcanology and risk communication at the University of Portsmouth, says: "The resistant infrastructure is unfortunately patchy in South Turkey and especially Syria, so saving lives now mostly relies on response. The next 24 hours are crucial to find survivors. After 48 hours the number of survivors decreases enormously."

This was a region where there had not been a major earthquake for more than 200 years or any warning signs, so the level of preparedness would be less than for a region which was more used to dealing with tremors.

• Earthquake destruction in before and after pictures
• The survivors' choice - danger inside or freezing outside

What caused the earthquake?

The Earth's crust is made up of separate bits, called plates, that nestle alongside each other.

These plates often try to move but are prevented by the friction of rubbing up against an adjoining one. But sometimes the pressure builds until one plate suddenly jerks across, causing the surface to move.

In this case it was the Arabian plate moving northwards and grinding against the Anatolian plate.

Friction from the plates has been responsible for very damaging earthquakes in the past.

On 13 August 1822 it caused an earthquake registering 7.4 in magnitude, significantly less than the 7.8 magnitude recorded on Monday.

Even so, the 19th Century earthquake resulted in immense damage to towns in the area, with 7,000 deaths recorded in the city of Aleppo alone. Damaging aftershocks continued for nearly a year.

There have already been several aftershocks following the current earthquake and scientists are expecting it to follow the same trend as the previous big one in the region.

• Huge quake toppled buildings as people slept
• Screaming, shaking... how it felt when the quake hit

How are earthquakes measured?

They are measured on a scale called the Moment Magnitude Scale (Mw). This has replaced the better known Richter scale, now considered outdated and less accurate.

The number attributed to an earthquake represents a combination of the distance the fault line has moved and the force that moved it .

A tremor of 2.5 or less usually cannot be felt, but can be detected by instruments. Quakes of up to five are felt and cause minor damage. The Turkish earthquake at 7.8 is classified as major and usually causes serious damage, as it has in this instance.

Anything above 8 causes catastrophic damage and can totally destroy communities at its centre.

How does this compare with other large earthquakes?

On 26 December 2004, one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded struck off the coast of Indonesia , triggering a tsunami that swept away entire communities around the Indian Ocean.

The 9.1 magnitude quake killed about 228,000 people.

Another earthquake - off the coast of Japan in 2011 - registered as magnitude 9 and caused widespread damage on the land, and caused a tsunami. It led to a major accident at the Fukushima nuclear plant along the coast.

The largest ever earthquake registered 9.5, and was recorded in Chile in 1960.

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Japan’s first-ever megaquake advisory brings worry and confusion. What does it mean?

Japan issued its first-ever “megaquake advisory” last week after a powerful earthquake struck off the southeastern coast of the country’s southern main island of Kyushu. Though the magnitude 7.1 quake caused no deaths or severe damage, the subsequent advisory caused public unease about when the next big one will hit.

A beach is deserted after swimming was prohibited as the megaquake advisory was issued in Nichinan, Miyazaki prefecture, southern Japan, on Aug. 9, 2024. (Kyodo News via AP)

Stone lanterns fall at a shrine following a strong earthquake in Nichinan, Miyazaki prefecture, southern Japan, on Aug. 9, 2024. (Kyodo News via AP)

A person checks emergency kit sold at a shop following a strong earthquake in Shibushi, Kagoshima prefecture, southern Japan, on Aug. 9, 2024. (Kyodo News via AP)

University of Tokyo seismologist Naoshi Hirata, left, a member of an expert panel, speaks during a press conference on the possible Nankai Trough earthquake, at Japan Meteorological Agency in Tokyo, on Aug. 8, 2024. (Kyodo News via AP)

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TOKYO (AP) — Japan, one of the most earthquake-prone nations on earth, issued its first-ever “megaquake advisory” last week after a powerful quake struck off the southeastern coast of the southern main island of Kyushu.

The magnitude 7.1 quake caused no deaths or severe damage, but the advisory has led to widespread confusion and a lingering sense of worry — in a country well accustomed to regular quakes — about when the next big one will hit.

The Associated Press explains what the advisory means, what people are being told to do, and what could happen if a massive quake hits Japan.

What is a megaquake advisory?

The Japan Meteorological Agency issued the advisory after concluding that the magnitude 7.1 quake that struck on Aug. 8 on the western edge of the Nankai Trough increased the likelihood of a stronger one.

There is a 70-80% chance of a magnitude 8 or 9 quake associated with the Nankai Trough within the next 30 years, and the probability is now “higher than normal” after the latest quake, the JMA says.

But that is not a prediction that a megaquake will happen at any specific time or location, says University of Tokyo seismologist Naoshi Hirata, who heads the JMA’s experts panel. He urged people to remain cautious and prepared.

What is the Nankai Trough?

The Nankai Trough is an undersea trench that runs from Hyuganada, in the waters just off the southeastern coast of Kyushu, to Suruga Bay in central Japan. It spans about 800 kilometers (500 miles) along the Pacific coast.

The Philippine Sea Plate there slowly pulls down on the Eurasian Plate and causes it to occasionally snap back, an action that could lead to a megaquake and tsunami, JMA says.

The last Nankai Trough quake off Shikoku in 1946 recorded a preliminary magnitude of 8.0 and killed more than 1,300 people.

How damaging can a megaquake be?

In 2013, a government disaster prevention team said a magnitude 9.1 Nankai Trough quake could generate a tsunami exceeding 10 meters (33 feet) within minutes, killing as many as 323,000 people, destroying more than 2 million buildings and causing economic damage of more than 220 trillion yen ($1.5 trillion) to large swaths of Japan’s Pacific coast.

What is the government doing to prepare?

As a result of the “megaquake advisory,” Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida canceled his planned Aug. 9-12 trip to Central Asia and announced he would lead the government response and ensure preventive measures and communication with the public.

The Fire and Disaster Management Agency instructed 707 municipalities seen as at risk from a Nankai Trough quake to review their response measures and evacuation plans.

Experts and officials have urged people to stay calm and carry on their daily social and economic activities while also securing emergency food and water and discussing evacuation plans with family members.

In a reassuring note on Monday, JMA experts said they have so far found no abnormal seismic or tectonic activity that would indicate a megaquake.

How are people reacting?

The “megaquake advisory,” which is filled with scientific jargon, has worried and baffled people across the country. Some towns closed beaches and canceled annual events, which has led to challenges for travelers during Japan’s Obon holiday week, a time for festivals and fireworks across the nation.

Many people have put off planned trips and rushed to stock up on rice, dried noodles, canned food, bottled water, portable toilets and other emergency goods, leaving shelves empty at many supermarkets in western Japan and Tokyo, even though the capital is outside the at-risk area.

The Summit supermarket chain said microwavable rice is in short supply and the store is limiting purchases to one pack per customer.

Yoshiko Kudo and her husband Shinya said they had trouble understanding what exactly the advisory meant, how worried they should be and what they should do.

“We are trying not to go overboard. Too much worry is not good,” Yoshiko Kudo said.

“We don’t know how to be prepared and to still live normally like the experts tell us,” said Shinya Kudo, a caregiver in his 60s.

Yoneko Oshima, walking by a major train station in Tokyo, said: “It’s scary ... They say there’s a (70-80%) chance in the next 30 years, but it could be tomorrow.” Her latest purchase is a portable toilet. She says water is indispensable for her diabetic husband, who needs to take medicine after every meal.

“I plan to take this opportunity to make a list and make sure we have everything at hand,” Oshima said. She hasn’t changed her holiday plans this week, but her daughter canceled a planned trip to Mount Fuji.

In Matsuyama city on the island of Shikoku, which has many hot springs, hotels and resorts reviewed their evacuation procedures and emergency equipment and launched a radio communication system for emergency use. They have received hundreds of cancellations since the advisory was issued, said Hideki Ochi, director of the Dogo Onsen Ryokan Association.

Rail companies serving the region said their trains are operating at slightly reduced speeds as a precaution.

A crisis management task force in the coastal town of Kuroshio in Kochi prefecture, where a tsunami as high as 34 meters (111 feet) was predicted in the government risk analysis, initially set up 30 shelters across town. But only two are still open following Monday’s JMA statement that there has been no indication of an impending megaquake.

Higashi Osaka urged residents on the town website not to engage in “unnecessary and non-urgent” travel in case of a major quake.

The popular seaside town of Shirahama in Wakayama prefecture said its four outdoor hot springs, parks and other facilities would be closed for a week. Saturday’s annual fireworks festival was also canceled.

Natural Disasters: Earthquakes, Floods and Volcanic Eruption Term Paper

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Introduction

Natural disasters are rapid and instantaneous occurrences that cause extreme devastation to the environment and the socioeconomic systems. The world is prone to many natural disasters though the the socioeconomic impacts can be mitigated. It is estimated that a third of the world economic cost is channeled towards prediction and mitigating disasters.

Death tolls vary from one catastrophe to another as some countries are vulnerable to these disasters recording a large number of deaths (Abbott, 12). An example is Japan, which is known to have experienced frequent and different types of disasters in the past (Kisslinger, 37). This paper discusses earthquakes, floods and volcanic eruption.

Earthquakes

Earthquakes have rocked the earth for a long period. Scientists do not have exact reasons why earthquakes occur. However, the only explanation given is that they occur when plates shift positions or collide. It is clear that some areas of the earth experience frequent and deadly earthquake more than others. Scientists study earthquakes using seismographs to locate the epicenter and for future predictions. Scientists have observed that different regions may have different earthquake precursors.

Therefore, to avoid faulty warnings, the tools used should monitor a wide range of parameters for vulnerable areas of the world. Predictions are made using data and observations in dense networks of epicenter areas (Abbott, 17). This will help in the future monitory of small earthquakes of six magnitudes and below. This is important since the techniques would help in predicting large future earthquakes for earthquake control. Today, experiments are done for future earthquake control in Colorado rangelands.

However, further studies are still necessary for reality in terms of understanding the physical processes involved, magnitudes, rock characteristics. This knowledge will play a significant role in earthquake control modification models and earthquake feasibility. The success of future predictions depends on the manpower commitment to seismological programs (Kisslinger 38).

California, San Fransico, 1906

San Fransico was occupied mainly by Spanish from Mexico. By 1906, the population was about half a million. The city experienced small, yearly earthquakes, and everyone knew about earthquakes. The city is built on the pacific and north America tectonic plates over the San Andreas fault stretching for about eight hundred miles and sixteen kilometers deep (Prokos, 43).

There are many other fault lines in the region. Each year, scientists record about 20,000 strong tremors. On 18th April 1906, a great earthquake of 7.8 magnitude hit the city at 5.00 am while people were still sleeping. Three thousand people lost their lives in this incident. The underling plates slid horizontally past each other.

Chimneys crumbled into pieces; buildings collapsed and crushed people while some were trapped. The streets split into two. Several days after the quake, the city was still in flames as the fire fighters could not extinguish the flames. Many people died instantly while others drowned in the flooded buildings as they could not escape. The aftershock flattened the already damaged buildings disrupting the recovery process (Weil, 17).

The calamity caused death of thousands of people, and almost all the material wealth were destroyed by fire. It caused both administrative and economic mess. The inhabitants described the disaster as a fire storm because the most destruction was done by the fire. The American and British insurance company settled the cost of losses at 65.3% and 34.3% respectively (Röder, 37).

After this disaster, the chiefs of major insurance companies pushed for major changes to improve the building codes and the infrastructure (Röder, 42). In January 2010, the population of San Francisco city was expected to be about 809, 249. This was extrapolated from US census of 2000.

The earth was formed million of years ago from a hot mess that split from the solar system. The force of gravity separated the earth into layers as heavier materials settled at the center whereas lighter materials settled on the outer surface. Volcanoes are known to release the pressure of the molten magma when the overlying rocks can no longer contain the pressure through eruption.

There are two kinds of volcanic mountain. The active volcano is expected to erupt in the future while the dormant volcanoes are not likely to erupt in the future. Some erupt for months and years while others erupts quickly and stop. A volcanic eruption is one of the most feared natural disasters. Volcanic eruptions cause extreme destruction to people, land, vegetation, landscape, buildings, roads and other infrastructure.

Major volcanic eruptions occur killing and injuring inhabitants of the volcanic active regions. Apart from the visible dangers of volcanoes, they can be a poisonous thereby killing living organism in case of contact. The dark ashes from the volcanoes may have several mixtures of gases resulting in air pollution (Thompson and Turk 31).

Prediction and risk assessment

Many volcanoes are active and thus the geologists should predict an eruption to reduce potential disasters. One should understand the tectonic environment of a given region as a first step for prediction. This is due to the relationship between an eruption and the geology of the area.

The previous frequencies and the magnitudes of eruptions are critical during future risk assessment. Regional predictions can estimate the time of a future earthquake, but cannot predict the intensity. Short term predictions are more accurate than regional predictions. In this case, short term focuses on detecting signs and time for an active volcano. Some signs can be seen in the changes within the surrounding land such as smoke or gas emissions, temperature of the nearby hot springs, and earthquake (Thompson and Turk 40).

The eruption of Mt St. Helens, 1980

The last time there was an eruption at Mt Helens was in 1857. Two US geologists predicted that the mountain would erupt before the end of the century due to the past frequent and violent eruptions. An earthquake occurred below the volcano causing small eruptions that led to a greater eruption two months later.

Geologists installed seismographs and surveying tools to record signs of the seismic activities. Sensitive and sophisticated equipments were used to detect changes in the ground water and temperature increase prior to the eruption. It was observed that the mountain swelled and increased in size due to the upward force of magma.

The results showed that the mountain could erupt again, and thus the government was advised to vacate the civilians to avoid loss of lives. These instruments were used in the Philippines in 1991 where lives were saved. David Johnstone is one of the unlucky scientists whom have been caught off guard and killed. The eruption flattened a vast area of thirty five by twenty kilometers. Some people were engulfed by the dark cloud debris as they tried to escape.

The high temperatures melted the mountain ice resulting in strong mud flows that flattened the vegetation and moved vehicles and buildings. The mud reached the Columbia river where it destroyed the river biodiversity. Ash clouds of high temperature smoldered everything in their path. The area still shows the effects of the disaster though the vegetation is slowly regenerating. The forest service has managed to replant trees, especially on the plain ground (Thompson and Turk 56).

Floods are natural occurrences that shape the landscape, ecological habitats, and ecosystems. Floods can cause loss of lives and property destruction. Thus, it is advisable for vulnerable regions take steps to predict and control floods. Poor land use methods in the rural and urban areas can cause flooding.

Different regions of Europe have experienced major flood problems between 1998 and 2000 due to climate change. It is predicted that floods will increase in Europe given the recent frequency. It is estimated that over 25 billion Euros insured economic losses experienced and about seven hundred fatalities. It was estimated that around 1.5% of the Europeans were affected by floods that covered expansive areas (International commission for the protection of Dandube river basin floods 3).

Danube river basin 2002

The flood affected the following countries: Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania. The flash flood Suceuva that is northern Romania led to massive deaths of citizens. Over sixteen thousand houses were flooded. Hundreds of kilometers of roads were destroyed, and close to five hundred bridges were destroyed.

The destruction of infrastructure also affected communication systems. The gas and electricity network were also damaged. Several municipalities in Hungary were affected with more than twenty thousand people being vacated from their homes. More than 4,370 homes were damaged. The presence of prevention structures and well executed emergency interventions minimized the possible overall damage.

Emergency operations were valued at thirty three million Euros, and over ten million Euros were needed for rehabilitation. The central parts of Slovakia were the most affected as 144 settlements and thousands of hectares were flooded. Damages were valued at €36.2 million, and emergency costs amounted to €2.2 million.

The 20 communities in the Morava river basin, Czech Republic were affected especially in regard to agriculture and infrastructure resulting in a €11.7 million damage cost. Over 10,000 homes and infrastructure were destroyed in lower and upper Austria. The total damage amounted to €3.1bilion.

In Germany, the Inn, Traun, Regen, and Salzach tributary areas were slightly affected due to the regulating structures that reduced a potentially extended damage. The 2006 floods caused swelling of rivers and many people abandoned their homes due to high water levels.

This was a major flooding experienced in the Danube in the last 100 years. The international commission for the protection of the Danube area revised the hydrology of the area to develop ways to support the national preparedness. The report from this meeting proposed possible solutions and the way forward to minimize damage in the future (International commission for the protection of Dandube river basin floods 5).

This paper has presented a few of the major natural disasters that the world has experienced. Natural disasters happen due to natural causes. However, experts should engage in prediction of the occurrence of natural disasters to issue alerts before the disasters strike. It is evident that disaster preparedness has been critical in reducing the magnitude of devastation in the past. Therefore, various governments should adopt mitigation measures that can assist in minimizing the impacts of the disasters.

Works Cited

Abbott, Patrick L. Natural Disasters . Dubuque, IA: McGraw-Hill, 2009. Print.

International commission for the protection of Dandube river basin floods, 2006. Web.

Kisslinger, Carl. Earthquake predictions. Physics Today , 27. 3. (1974): 36-42. Print.

Prokos, Anna. Earthquakes . Pleasantville, NY: Gareth Stevens Pub, 2009. Print.

Röder, Tilmann J. From Industrial to Legal Standardization, 1871-1914: Transnational Insurance Law and the Great San Francisco Earthquake . Leiden [u.a.: Martinus Nijhoff Brill, 2011. Print.

Thompson, Graham R. and J. Turk. Earth Science and the Environment . Australia: Thomson Brooks/Cole, 2007. Print.

Weil, Ann. Earthquakes . Costa Mesa, Calif.: Saddleback Educational Pub, 2013. Print.

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1. IvyPanda . "Natural Disasters: Earthquakes, Floods and Volcanic Eruption." November 30, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/natural-disasters/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Natural Disasters: Earthquakes, Floods and Volcanic Eruption." November 30, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/natural-disasters/.

Earthquake scientists are learning warning signs of the 'big one.' When should they tell the public?

For U.S. seismologists, Japan’s “megaquake” warning last week renewed discussion about when and how to warn people on the West Coast if they find elevated risk of a major earthquake.

COPALIS BEACH, WASH. — When Japan issued its first-ever “megaquake” warning last week, Harold Tobin, Washington state’s seismologist, was watching carefully.

The advisory came after a 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck the southern island of Kyushu. Although that shaking caused little major damage — the biggest tsunami wave it produced would have risen up to your knee — it wasn’t the main worry.

Rather, seismologists were concerned that the quake would create stress that could trigger a bomb ticking offshore: Japan’s Nankai trough, likely the country’s most dangerous fault. The subduction zone has the potential to generate 100-foot-tall tsunami waves and kill nearly a third of a million people , according to Japanese government estimates.

Did the smaller quake mean that the “big one” was on the doorstep? No one could say for sure, but the odds were suddenly higher — if only by a few percentage points.“Exactly what might keep me up at night,” Tobin said, if it were happening on the U.S. West Coast.

In Japan, the advisory prompted officials to close beaches, cancel fireworks celebrations and slow trains . People rushed to stock up on emergency supplies.

In the U.S., Tobin said, “we don’t have such a protocol.”We do, however, have a similarly dangerous fault: the Cascadia subduction zone.

A magnitude-9.0 earthquake on the Cascadia fault and the resulting tsunami would kill an estimated 14,000 people in Oregon and Washington, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency .

But if a smaller quake like the one Japan just saw happened near Cascadia, seismologists would have to decide on the fly whether and how to alert the public.

It’s the scenario Tobin has been thinking about for years: If he finds clues that a devastating earthquake is more likely, even just slightly, what warrants sounding the alarm? If the odds say you would be crying wolf — should you?

“You don’t want a mass evacuation panic that’s not warranted, but you want people not to go on their merry ways,” Tobin said.

His quandary is, in part, the product of this strange time in Tobin’s field: Researchers think they are homing in on the triggers or precursors of earthquakes in the world’s most dangerous seismic regions, but the science is far from settled. And even when the likelihood of an earthquake could be higher, the chances remain small. That leaves high-stakes questions about when to issue a warning.

On a chilly summer day in Washington state, Tobin and a dozen other scientists canoed up the Copalis River to a graveyard of cedar trees killed 324 years ago.A kingfisher chittered and the wind sent shivers through tall, golden grass. It’s a peaceful place about a mile from the Pacific shore that tells the story of a violent day.

On Jan. 26, 1700, an earthquake on the Cascadia fault caused the forest to lurch downward by more than 3 feet. Soon after, a tsunami perhaps 100 feet high barreled through at 20 or 30 mph.

The scientists were visiting the forest to view the geologic evidence of the Cascadia quake in person. Occasionally, they’d hop out of their canoes, dig through the muck and pull out a 300-year-old pine cone as evidence.

Experts know the earthquake was at least a magnitude-8.7, because that’s how powerful it had to be to send the wave across the world that was documented in Japan.

“Some of the very best written records of our tsunami in 1700 come from Nankai,” said Brian Atwater, a USGS geologist emeritus who led the canoe flotilla. Atwater has used those Japanese records, along with plants buried in tsunami-deposited sand and dates from the rings of the Washington cedar trees, to piece together that tsunami’s story.

Research by USGS geophysicist Danny Brothers indicates there have likely been at least 30 large earthquakes over the last 14,200 years in sections of the Cascadia subduction zone, which runs along the U.S. West Coast from Northern California to northern Vancouver Island. A large earthquake there can be expected at least once every 450-500 years, on average.But for years, Cascadia has remained quiet; some scientists say that’s because much of it is “locked” and building stress. When it rips, a chunk of the seafloor will lurch forward — perhaps by dozens of feet or more. The vertical displacement of the seafloor will send a tsunami toward shore.

“It’s going to be the worst natural disaster in our country’s history,” said Robert Ezelle, the director of Washington state’s emergency management division.

For seismologists, the key question now is how to forecast this future violence. Fast-developing research is hinting that faults like Cascadia and Nankai might send out warning signals: a smaller quake as a foreshock, or a subtle groan only detectable by sensors, which scientists call a slow-slip event.

In Tobin’s nightmare scenario, the Cascadia fault suddenly issues that type of groan. Then — what to do?

If a major Cascadia quake were to hit, more than 100,000 people would be injured, projections say — assuming the quake hits when few people are at the beach. The shaking would last five minutes. Tsunami waves would batter the coast for 10 hours.

Inland hillsides would liquify, taking out roads and bridges. Some 620,000 buildings would be critically damaged or collapse, including an estimated 100 hospitals and 2,000 schools.

“We’re unprepared,” Ezelle said frankly.

Washington state advises residents that they would likely have to fend for themselves and against the elements for two weeks.

“It’s going to be neighbors taking care of neighbors,” Ezelle said.

A map of the Pacific Ring of Fire — where tectonic plates converge to form subduction zones and volcanoes — leaves Ezelle particularly uneasy.

“Over the last 50 to 60 years, and you will see that every subduction zone fault has had a major rupture — with the exception of Cascadia,” he said.

Japan ended its “megaquake” advisory on Thursday , after no unusual activity was detected on the Nankai trough.In a similar situation in New Zealand in 2016, things played out a little differently.

That November, the magnitude-7.8 Kaikoura earthquake rumbled off the east side of New Zealand’s South Island, killing two and causing more than a billion dollars in damage .

A day later, scientists noticed a few centimeters of movement near the shore of the North Island via satellite monitoring. Subtle vibrations were emanating from the Hikurangi Margin, a subduction zone and the country’s largest fault, which is directly under the capital city of Wellington.

It was a slow-slip earthquake, the sloth of the seismic world, kicked off by the Kaikoura shaking. Such quakes release their energy slowly over weeks or months and don’t cause perceptible shaking. Scientists first recognized their existence about two decades ago, thanks to advances in GPS technology.

Some scientists, like Tobin and geophysicist Laura Wallace, think these slow-slip events might sometimes precede big subduction zone quakes. Scientists recorded a slow-slip event in 2011 before the magnitude-9 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan, which killed more than 18,000 people and touched off the Fukushima nuclear disaster. A similar pattern played out in 2014, before a magnitude-8.1 earthquake in Chile .

Wallace, who was working for the New Zealand research institute GNS Science at the time of the 2016 quake, spent her waking hours scrambling to track the quake’s every movement, model risk and answer questions from the government.

“I don’t think I’ve ever felt such an immense load of responsibility,” Wallace said. “I was taking my dog with me to the office because if we had a big earthquake, I didn’t want to be separated from my dog.”

Wallace and her colleagues determined that the probability of a major earthquake was elevated as much as 18 times , and that the risk within a year was 0.6% to 7%. But the big one never materialized.

“Which of these slow-slip events are going to essentially trigger the next big one?” Wallace said. “It’s one of the most important problems we’re trying to understand.”

For the Cascadia subduction zone, gaining a better understanding of the warning signs requires more data on slow-slip events, improved mapping of the fault zone and an enhanced capability of monitoring faults on the seafloor.

Tobin was part of a team that recently mapped the Cascadia subduction zone in the greatest detail yet . They found the fault is separated into four sections, which could rupture all at once or individually in succession. The individual segments are capable of producing a magnitude-8 earthquake or higher.Meanwhile, researchers are trying to bolster the offshore monitoring network for Cascadia.

Japan has a sophisticated array of seafloor sensors, but it’s “one of the few places that have those instruments,” said David Schmidt, a geophysicist at the University of Washington.

The U.S. lags on seafloor monitoring, but Schmidt and Tobin are part of a group that received $10.6 million in federal funding to add seismic sensors and seafloor pressure gauges to a fiber optic cable off the Oregon coast.

The devices will help keep tabs on Cascadia. If the data can help researchers learn about what’s normal for the fault, they might also be able to determine when it’s time to worry.

Evan Bush is a science reporter for NBC News.

Is L.A. getting too freaked out over small earthquakes?

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Even little earthquakes are a big deal these days

My first indication of last week’s magnitude 4.4 earthquake came from the L.A. Times’ Slack messaging system. Colleagues in Hollywood, Highland Park, Pasadena and other locations near the epicenter reported feeling the jolt several seconds before the shaking made its way to my house in Long Beach.

The newsroom sprang into action. No damage. No injuries. A minor “chandelier rattler” if there ever was one. But our five stories on the quake included the names of more than a dozen reporters and editors contributing to the coverage.

This is now our playbook. Earthquakes — even relatively small ones — are huge news in California.

I am old enough to remember it was not always this way.

The L.A. Times used to be a quake denier

There was a time when anything less than a magnitude 5.0 merited only a news brief and “Did you feel that one?” small talk at the supermarket checkout line. But social media, major advances in seismic technology (remember how long it used to take to figure out the epicenter and magnitude?) and our growing obsession with California catastrophe changed all that. The Times now has a robot that “writes” the first take on an earthquake so we can get the news up fast.

While our readers flock to this coverage, some news traditionalists roll their eyes at how much we write about what they consider minor news. Are you just trying to gin up web traffic? What will happen when there really is a big one?

Seismic obsession is relatively new for L.A. newspapers.

For many decades, The Times and other news organizations downplayed the risk of big quakes in the region, fearful it would drive away tourists and residents. When San Francisco was flattened in 1906, L.A. papers insisted it could not happen here; “Earthquakes in Southern California do not occur often and do not destroy human life,” The Times declared.

When Long Beach was hit by a deadly temblor in 1933, it generated banner headlines. But The Times also castigated the “East Coast” for exaggerating the scale of the devastation and the death toll under the headline “Yes, but where is all the damage?” A running theme was that rival cities like Miami were purposely planting false stories about L.A.’s quake risk to scare people away.

The one exception came when a phantom quake could cover up corruption, as Paul Haddad notes in his excellent history of early Los Angeles, “Inventing Paradise.” Hoping to justify L.A.’s notorious taking of water from the Owens River hundreds of miles away, The Times suggested the river once flowed toward Los Angeles but that a massive quake caused mountains to rise up and block it.

“No geologists were quoted,” Haddad noted.

When it comes to quakes, denial is dangerous

California media’s approach to earthquakes began changing in the 1970s when a series of big temblors made seismology a political issue. The 1971 Sylmar quake revealed serious flaws in some very popular building techniques . A brand-new hospital made of concrete collapsed, along with many unreinforced masonry structures. The Times and other papers helped expose the weaknesses . L.A. eventually required thousands of old brick buildings to be retrofitted.

Then came three destructive quakes in a seven-year span — the Whittier Narrows in 1987 , Loma Prieta in 1989 and Northridge in 1994 . This sparked the biggest seismic safety campaign yet, eventually covering freeways, bridges and hospitals.

But there has not been a huge quake in the heart of our most populous urban areas since, and some seismic safety efforts have slowed in California.

The biggest seismic danger we face is denial, putting the risks out of our minds rather than working together to make our city safer. Each tremor is a chance to talk about the risk, look at how we can protect ourselves better and do some basic seismology education. An effort by The Times a decade ago helped lead L.A. to require retrofits to thousands of vulnerable buildings.

And quake denial takes many forms. In 1974, Times writer Jack Smith took his daughter-in-law from France to see the disaster flick “Earthquake!” at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood. It was a surreal experience, being in Hollywood, watching filmmakers destroy Hollywood with a killer quake, demolishing everything including the Capitol Records building just down the street.

Afterward, Smith wrote, his young daughter-in-law asked that they drive past the landmark building. “I’d just like to see if it is still there. It would make me feel better.”

It was, and both of them breathed a bit easier.

But the fictionalized terror of earthquakes should not sidetrack us from the real threat. When it comes to Hollywood, The Times’ own reporting shows that earthquakes are definitely alarming, but it is also within our means to make our structures better and safer.

If California’s seismic history shows, fear is the ultimate motivator.

Today’s top stories

New protest rules at the University of California

• University of California President Michael V. Drake directed chancellors of all 10 campuses to strictly enforce rules against encampments, protests that block pathways and masking that shields identities.
• UC regents say bans on campus encampments should be enforced .
• UC unveiled steep price tag for handling campus protests: $29 million, most for policing .
• UCLA’s campus erupted into violence one fateful night in May.

The first night of the DNC

• Mayor Karen Bass Bass cited Harris’ ‘passion’ and ‘fearlessness’ in helping children
• Biden, in a fiery and emotional convention speech , made a case for Harris last night.
• Kamala Harris’ Indian American political family is thrilled
• This delegate made 1,000 ‘Taylor Swift’ and ‘Kamala’ bracelets for her fellow DNC delegates
• The Trump campaign aired grievances as Democratic convention begins.
• Pro-Palestinian protesters at Democratic convention denounced U.S. policy on Gaza .

Cops and law enforcement

• “A shock to us all”: LAPD moved to fire supervisors of the troubled Mission gang unit.
• A poll shows Hochman has momentum to unseat L.A. County Dist. Atty. Gascón .
• The men charged with murder in Johnny Wactor’s death implicated themselves in jailhouse talk , sources said.

More big stories

• Kern County is having its summer of fire. And summer’s not over .
• Nearly $1 billion in funds were left unspent by centers for disabled Californians.
• COVID and bird flu are rising. Here’s how to keep yourself safe.
• Ron Kaye, Daily News editor who fought City Hall and boosted cityhood for the Valley , died at 83.
• Phil Donahue, the pioneering host of long-running daytime talk show “Donahue,” died at 88.

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Commentary and opinions

• Mark Z. Barabak : Pelosi on Biden ouster: “I just wanted to win this election. So if they’re upset, I’m sorry for them”
• Sammy Roth : Heat, fires, floods — extreme weather has affected 99% of Americans
• Jonah Goldberg : Kamala Harris wants to tackle corporate “price-gouging.” Here’s what she’s missing
• Michael Hiltzik: Harris is right about housing assistance and price-gouging. Here’s what you should know.
• Bill Plaschke : Gone but never forgotten, Dodgers should bring Justin Turner home.

Today’s great reads

Algae here, alien life out there — Cal State L.A.-JPL partnership connects engineers to astrobiology. JPL hires Cal State Los Angeles civil engineering students with NASA grant. The interns can do research for NASA and learn about connections between astrobiology and science here on Earth.

Other great reads

• His “Shōgun” warrior lives by a (very flexible) moral code , says Tadanobu Asano.
• A Girl Scout troop for young migrants offers a haven in a chaotic city.

How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to [email protected] .

For your downtime

• 🌝 Rare super blue moon will be in the skies this week. Here’s how to see it.
• 🕺 Here’s what to do in West Adams.
• 🏖️ Visit one of the 50 best beaches in Southern California.
• 📖 Read the bestselling books of this week
• 🧑‍🍳 Here’s a recipe for Tofu bowls with avocado, cabbage and turmeric tahini
• ✏️ Get our free daily crossword puzzle, sudoku, word search and arcade games .

And finally ... a great photo

Show us your favorite place in California! Send us photos that scream California and we may feature them in an edition of Essential California.

Today’s great photo is from Adam Davis. Here’s what Davis wrote in his photo essay : “Little did I know upon entering the Industry Hills Expo Center in West Covina recently to witness the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo for the first time last year, I had stumbled onto an event where Black communities across the country congregate yearly for a day of fun, food, riding and fellowship.”

Have a great day, from the Essential California team

Ryan Fonseca, reporter Defne Karabatur, fellow Andrew Campa, Sunday reporter Christian Orozco, assistant editor Stephanie Chavez, deputy metro editor Karim Doumar, head of newsletters

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As deputy managing editor for news, Shelby Grad supervises the Los Angeles Times’ daily report on all platforms. He manages a team that includes the Fast Break Desk, the Multiplatform Editing Desk, and editors overseeing A1 and the weekend edition.

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Watch CBS News

Extremely rare "doomsday fish" found off Southern California coast

By Kerry Breen

Updated on: August 15, 2024 / 11:39 AM EDT / CBS News

Kayakers and snorkelers exploring the Southern California coast spotted an extremely rare oarfish, nicknamed a "doomsday fish" since they are seen in some parts of the world as harbingers of imminent disasters. It's one of less than two dozen confirmed sightings of an oarfish in the state in over 120 years, according to UC  San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography . 

The oarfish is a "strikingly large, odd-looking fish" with a long, silvery, ribbon-shaped body, according to the Ocean Conservatory . The fish can grow to more than 30 feet long, and have large eyes and "foreboding" red spines in a crown-like cluster. Typically, these fish are deep-sea dwellers and thrive in waters that are the least explored by scientists. 

The fish spotted by oceangoers on August 10 was 12 feet long, according to the institution. The fish had already died at the time of the discovery, and was found near the shores of La Jolla Cove. Because the fish usually reside in the deep ocean, they are only spotted close to the surface if they are sick, dying or disoriented, according to the conservatory. 

Only 20 oarfish have washed up in California since 1901, the Scripps Institute said. 

The group coordinated with the NOAA Fisheries Service, California Sea Grant team members and local lifeguards to transport the fish to a NOAA facility. Scientists from the NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography plan to perform a necropsy to attempt to determine a cause of death. 

The remains of the fish will later be displayed in the Scripps Marine Vertebrate Collection, which is one of the largest collections of deep-sea fish in the world, according to the institution. 

The fish have their alarming nickname due to a reputation as harbingers of earthquakes or other bad news, according to the Ocean Conservancy. Twenty such fish reportedly washed up on the shores of Japan right before the catastrophic 2011 earthquake . The California oarfish was indeed found just two days before a 4.4 earthquake struck the region and rattled Los Angeles . 

Kerry Breen is a news editor at CBSNews.com. A graduate of New York University's Arthur L. Carter School of Journalism, she previously worked at NBC News' TODAY Digital. She covers current events, breaking news and issues including substance use.

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