Earthquakes

Earthquakes are experienced as shockwaves or intense vibrations on the

Earth’s surface. They are usually caused by ruptures along geological fault
lines in the Earth’s crust, resulting in the sudden release of energy in the
form of seismic waves. They can also be triggered by volcanic activity or
human actions, such as industrial or military explosions.

Earthquakes can occur almost anywhere in the world, but most take place
along particularly active belts ranging from tens to hundreds of miles
wide. An earthquake’s epicentre is the point on the Earth’s surface directly
above the source or focus of the earthquake. Most earthquakes are small
and cause little or no damage, but very large earthquakes, followed by a
series of smaller aftershocks, can be devastating. Depending on the
location of the epicentre, these earthquakes can have particularly
disastrous effects on densely populated areas as well as the infrastructure
that supports them, such as bridges, highways, apartment buildings,
skyscrapers, and single-family homes.

Earthquakes can destroy our built-up environments and the essential

systems we rely on for our lives and livelihoods. They also have the
potential to cause landslides and tsunamis (giant ocean waves that can
flood and destroy coastal regions), both of which can have devastating
effects on people and communities. The social and economic
consequences of earthquakes can be vast, and recovering from them can
take many years.

Early Explanations

Humans have come a long way in their understanding of the causes of

earthquakes. At first, myths and legends explained processes beneath the
Earth’s surface. Thinkers from the time of the Greek philosopher
Anaxagoras (500–428 BC) to the German canon and councillor Konrad von
Megenberg (1309–1374) in the late Middle Ages believed, with slight
variations, that air vapours caught in Earth’s cavities were the cause of
earthquakes: thus, Thales of Miletus (c. 625–547 BC), the founder of Ionian
natural philosophy, was among the first to attribute earthquakes to the
rocking of the Earth on water. The Greek philosopher Anaximenes of
Miletus (585–526 BCE) thought that periods of dryness and wetness were
responsible for earthquakes. Aristotle (384–322 BC) described
earthquakes as the consequence of compressed air captured in caves; his
ideas were used to explain meteorological phenomena and earthquakes
until the Middle Ages.

When classical antiquity was rediscovered by the Christian Occident

around 1200, significant parts of Greek ideology were merged with
Christian ideas. Albertus Magnus (1193–1280), a German scientist and
philosopher, supported the study of the writings of Aristotle and Arabic
and Jewish commentators. His own works made an outstanding
contribution to the development of the sciences. Georgius Agricola (1494–
1555), a German humanist, physician, and mineralogist, believed that
earthquakes were the consequence of a subterranean fire ignited by the
sun. The long-lasting hypothesis of a central subterranean fire, proposed
by the Greek philosopher Pythagoras (570–500 BCE), was revived in the
book Mundus Subterraneous by German scholar Athanasius Kircher (1601–
1680).

During the eighteenth-century scientists became increasingly convinced

that no natural phenomenon was unexplainable, thus an explanation for
earthquakes became a challenge for scientists of the Enlightenment. The
English physician William Stukeley (1687–1765) wrote in his Philosophy of
Earthquakes that earthquakes were caused by electrostatic discharge
between sky and Earth, like lightning.

The most catastrophic earthquake of the eighteenth century occurred in

1755, destroying Lisbon, Portugal, killing about sixty thousand people, and
initiating great debate about the cause of earthquakes. The following year
the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) proposed chemical
causes for earthquakes. He rejected mystical and religious explanations
and held that the cause is below our feet.

Important Discoveries

The Englishmen John Winthrop (1606–1676) and John Michell (1724–1793)

began to reflect not only on the causes but also the effects of
earthquakes. Winthrop, a mathematician and natural philosopher, made
the important discovery that earthquakes were waves; this discovery
would be revived a hundred years later. In 1760, Michell published a study
in which he recognized wavelike motions of the ground. With that he
anticipated the perception that would lead to an understanding of the
cause of earthquakes.

Another significant step was taken by the Irish engineer Robert Mallet
(1810–1881) when he began documenting worldwide earthquake
occurrences. He compiled a catalogue of six thousand earthquakes from
which he was able to draw the most complete earthquake map of the
world in 1857. The cause of earthquakes was still unknown, but Mallet’s
research, which led to the understanding of the origin of mountains and
continents, supplied the basic approach to answering the question. In
1912, the German meteorologist and geophysicist Alfred Wegener (1880–
1930) presented his theory of continental drift, which states that parts of
the Earth’s crust slowly drift atop a liquid core. Wegener hypothesized that
there was a single gigantic continent (Pangaea) 200 million years ago.

Causes

Earthquakes are classified as either natural or induced. Natural

earthquakes are further classified as tectonic—the most common (more
than 90 percent of all earthquakes are tectonic)—volcanic (occurring in
conjunction with volcanic activity), and collapse (for example, occurring in
regions with caverns). Induced earthquakes are vibrations of the ground
caused by human activities, such as construction of dams, mining, and
nuclear explosions. For example, filling a reservoir in Koyna, India, induced
a catastrophic earthquake in December 1967 that caused 177 deaths.

Most earthquakes are caused by the movement of tectonic plates, as

explained by the continental drift theory of Wegener. Tectonic plates are
large segments of the Earth’s lithosphere (the outer, rigid shell of the
Earth that contains the crust, continents, and plates). The Earth’s surface
consists of nine major plates: six continental plates (the North American,
South American, Eurasian, African, Indo-Australian, and Antarctic plates)
and three oceanic plates (the Pacific, Nazca, and Cocos plates). Tectonic
plates move in relation to each other and along faults over the deeper
interior. Faults are fractures in rock along which the two sides have been
displaced relative to each other. An example is the well-known San
Andreas Fault in California, which separates the Pacific plate (on which San
Francisco and Los Angeles lie) from the North American plate.

When lava is upwelling at mid oceanic (mid-Pacific, mid-Atlantic) ridges,

rock moves slowly on either side of the ridges across the Earth’s surface.
New plates are constantly created, while other plates must be absorbed at
subduction zones (where the edge of one plate descends below the edge
of another).

Earthquakes, volcanoes, mountain building, and subduction zones are

generally explained as consequences of steady, large, horizontal surface
motions. Most tectonic plates contain both dry land and ocean floor. At
present, those plates containing Africa, Antarctica, North America, and
South America are growing, whereas the Pacific plate is shrinking. When
plates collide, mountain chains such as the Alps and Himalayas arise,
accompanied by persistent earthquake activity.

Seismographs and the Richter Scale

Earthquakes are recorded by sensitive instruments called seismographs.

Today’s seismographs record ground shaking over a band of frequencies
and seismic amplitudes. A seismogram (the record created by a
seismograph) shows the motions of the Earth’s surface caused by seismic
waves across time. Earthquakes generate different kinds of seismic
waves: P (primary) waves alternately compress and dilate the rock,
whereas S (secondary) waves move in a shear motion, perpendicular to
the direction the wave is traveling. From a seismogram, the distance and
energy of an earthquake can be determined. At least three seismograms
are needed to locate where an earthquake occurred. The place at which
rupture commences is the focus, or hypocenter, while the point on the
Earth’s surface directly above the focus of an earthquake is the epicentre.
The distance between the focus and the epicentre is the focal depth of an
earthquake.

The amount of energy released by an earthquake is measured and

represented by its magnitude. One common type of magnitude
measurement is the Richter scale, named after the U.S. seismologist
Charles Francis Richter (1900–1985). The Richter scale is logarithmic,
meaning the seismic energy of a magnitude 7 earthquake is one thousand
times greater than that of a magnitude 5 earthquake.

Earthquake Catastrophes

The following examples from different regions provide vivid examples of

the kind of devastation earthquakes can inflict on human populations.

1906: San Francisco, California

The 18 April 1906 San Francisco earthquake, with a magnitude of 7.8,

remains one of the most cataclysmic in Californian history. The damaged
region extended over 600 square kilometres (about 232 square miles).
The earthquake was felt in most of California and parts of western Nevada
and southern Oregon. The earthquake caused the longest rupture of a
fault that has been observed in the contiguous United States. The
displacement of the San Andreas Fault was observed over 300 kilometres
(about 186 miles). The maximum intensity of XI, measured on the
Modified Mercalli Intensity Scale ratings of I–XII, was based on geologic
effects.

The earthquake and resulting fires took an estimated three thousand lives
and caused about $524 million in property loss. The earthquake damaged
buildings and structures in all parts of the city and county of San
Francisco. Brick and frame houses of ordinary construction were damaged
considerably or completely destroyed, and sewers and water mains were
broken, including a pipeline that carried water from San Andreas Lake to
San Francisco, interrupting the water supply to the city. This made it
impossible to control the fires that ignited soon after the earthquake
occurred, and subsequently those fires destroyed a large part of San
Francisco. It was not until 1908 that San Francisco was well on the way to
recovery.

1995: Hanshin-Awaji; Kobe, Japan

On 17 January 1995, the Great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake with a

magnitude of 6.9 occurred directly under the industrialized urban area of
Kobe, Japan, a city of about 1.5 million people. The shock occurred at a
shallow depth on a fault running from Awaji Island through Kobe. Strong
ground shaking lasted for about twenty seconds and caused severe
damage over a large area. More than five thousand people were killed; the
total cost of damage and destruction exceeded $100 billion, or about 2
percent of Japan’s gross national product. More than 150,000 buildings
were ruined; highways, bridges, railroads, and subways failed; water,
sewage, gas, electric power, and telephone systems were extensively
damaged.

The city of Kobe—then one of the six largest container cargo ports in the
world and Japan’s largest—was devastated. Its relative importance as a
major hub in Asia declined over the following years, with significant
enormous economic consequences. With Japan’s having invested heavily
in earthquake research, people believed they would be ready for the next
earthquake, but their faith was shattered deeply by the Kobe catastrophe.

2003: Bam, Iran

On 26 December 2003, an earthquake occurred below the city of Bam in

the southeast of Iran, illustrating again the tragic connection between
poor building quality and large numbers of victims. The earthquake had a
magnitude of 6.5, and the hypocentre was only 8 kilometres (about 5
miles) below the city. The people of Bam were still sleeping when the
earthquake struck. The death toll was estimated at 43,200, with more
than 30,000 injured and 100,000 left homeless. The main reason for the
large number of fatalities was the generally poor construction quality of
buildings, 85 percent of which were damaged. Even though experts had
classified the region as a highly exposed zone prior to the earthquake,
many of the residences were traditional houses of mud-brick construction,
with heavy roofs. Unreinforced masonry holds almost no resistance
against the ground motion generated by strong earthquakes.

Preparing for Earthquakes

Increasing population density magnifies the potential damaging effects of

earthquakes, especially in urban areas with high seismic activity—for
example, San Francisco. For this reason, anti-seismic building codes are
important. Appropriate planning and regulation of new buildings and
seismic upgrading of existing buildings can safeguard most types of
buildings against earthquake shocks. One obstacle to adhering to anti-
seismic building codes is high cost; this is true particularly in poorer cities
in the developing world, and the effects can be particularly devastating.

Mexico City; Sichuan Province, China; Haiti

The 19 September 1985 Mexico City earthquake occurred 200 kilometres

(about 124 miles) from Mexico City, but the shaking of loose sediments in
the city was much stronger than at the epicentre. Nearly ten thousand
people died, and the city was heavily damaged as poorly constructed
buildings collapsed. The earthquake destroyed as many as 100,000
housing units and countless public buildings.

Hundreds of millions of people live in buildings that would collapse in a

strong earthquake, as happened in the mountainous Sichuan Province of
China in 2008, when as many as 90,000 people were killed or remain
missing, with another 374,000 injured and at least 15 million displaced.

It is anticipated that, in the future, more catastrophes with high death tolls
will occur. Owing to the rapid growth of many developing-world
metropolises in highly exposed regions, such scenarios are distinctly more
probable, despite the possibilities provided by modern earthquake
engineering.

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