Why Are Earthquake Impacts Different In Ledcs And Medcs?

About 4000 people were killed over 9000 that were injured that was this famous event you might ask? It was the loma prieta earthquake, also known as the world series earthquake. Taking place in san francisco 1898 this was one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded in the bay area. This earthquake caused an estimate of 5.6 billion dollars for the total damage it had done .The person the was interviewed for this event was Mr.Demichel.he was about 10 when he felt the earthquake.

In Afghanistan people were trapped in their homes, and objects were not properly tied down. Buildings kill people not earthquakes.

On August 24, 2014 a magnitude 6.0 earthquake occurred in and around the city of Napa, CA. The earthquake killed one person and injured over 150 people. And these people were treated at Queen of the Valley Medical Center in Napa [1]. More and more earthquakes occurred on this earth. So this grasps people’s attention.

The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake tectonic setting was in the outermost shell of earth known as the crust this is composed of rigid plates that have been moving for hundreds of millions of years. Two of these moving plates meet in western California; the boundary between them is a zone of faults, the principal one being the San Andreas fault. The horizontal sliding of the Pacific Plate relative to the North American Plate, causes earthquakes along the San Andreas fault and similar plates near the region. The San Andreas fault is a transform plate boundary, accommodating horizontal relative motions (usgs.gov).

Lasting less than a minute, the immediate impact of the earthquake was disastrous. The earthquake also lead to several fires around the city that burned for three days and destroyed nearly 500 city blocks (archives.gov).The earthquake and fires killed an estimated 3,000

According to the court clerk of the U.S. District Court of San Francisco, the earthquake lasted around a minute, however that minute was enough to inflict one of the most devastating disasters in United States history. The earthquake was felt from Oregon to Las Angeles as well as Nevada with the epicenter occurring 2 miles away from San Francisco in the Pacific Ocean. The quake resulted in water mains and gas lines breakages, and the fires raged unchecked which spread to over 500 blocks in San Francisco. Although the earthquake of 1906 is known as the San Francisco earthquake, the cities of Santo Rosa and San Jose were affected as well and lost much of their infrastructure.

The damages were catastrophic as houses lay in ruin and debris littered the roads. There were mudslides and fallen rocks that paved the roads and made them impassible for vehicles to get through. Ultimately by the roads being clogged up the response time by rescue workers and essential personal were hampered. This also made it exceptionally difficult for supplies to be rushed to the locations for the earthquake survivors. As some were digging and excavating for survivors they were being halted by aftershocks and falling debris from above. Approximately 8000 people were killed either by their houses caving in or by the other disasters this earthquake triggered. It was a real life tragedy that

Before an earthquake even occurs it is possible to predict roughly where and when it will happen due to detailed seismic records and sophisticated technology such as radon gas emissions, remote sensing and low-frequency electromagnetic activity. In MEDCs like the US, especially around California, dedicated groups of scientists devote their careers to the investigation of earthquake hazards and management. They have access to the latest technology, computers and forecasting to enable them to find out and report back to the wider population about any possible risks. However, in LEDCs like Iran, researching and educating their population about earthquakes is not a priority. Their main goal is to develop their profitable oil reserves and they are still relatively underdeveloped in comparison to the US with a GDP per capita of $818.7 billion compared with America’s $14.66 trillion. The fact that they are not fully developed as a nation puts them at an immediate disadvantage in terms of their ability to prepare for an earthquake.

"U.S. taxpayers will cover seventy-five to a hundred per cent of the damages"(Schulz). A large effect of the earthquake will be damage to "Oregon's critical energy-infrastructure hub, a six-mile of Portland through which ninety per cent of the state's liquid fuel and which houses everything from electrical substations to natural-gas terminals" (Schulz).

New York Times reports that this event killing nearly 1100 people, because the building was unstable in their giant cracks in the foundation and walls.

The tea cups that began to shatter were enough to wake Rose M. Quinn from her bed in the early morning hours of April 18, 1906. The earthquake that lasted just one minute was estimated to be close to 8.0 on the richter scale and was large enough to destroy 30,000 buildings, including her own home, in what was determined to be one of the most catastrophic natural disasters in U.S history. And while Ms.Quinn held out hope that her “City of the Golden West” would restore its nearly 400 million dollars worth of damage (10.8 billion dollars today), an even stronger and largely unknown earthquake rocked the United States just 100 years prior.

The 1906 disaster, a major earthquake estimated at between 7.8 and 8.3 magnitude. Haiti’s was a 7.0 in 2010.On

On October 15th an earthquake killed nearly 90 people. In the Philippines killed nearly 200 and displacing tens of thousands of dollars. The quake wrecked about more than 45,000 homes. These earthquakes have affected many people, damaging homes and even lives and causes millions of dollars for repairs. The quake, the strongest to hit the disaster-prone country in recent years, struck Bohol on October 15th. Felt across several neighbouring provinces, more than 2,500 aftershock have rippled through the region since.(Documents

     Floods and fires are also caused by earthquakes. Floods arise from tsunamis along coast lines, from large-scale seiches in enclosed bodies of water such as lakes and canals, and from the failure of dams. Fire produced the greatest property loss following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, when 521 blocks in the city center burned uncontrollably for three days. Fire also followed the 1923 Tokyo earthquake, causing much damage and hardship for the citizens.

In the U.S. alone, the average annual cost to repair damage caused by earthquakes is $4.4 billion USD. The worldwide figure is much larger than this but unquantifiable due to poorer countries unable to accurately determine the amount of damage that occurred. Year after year the cost of damages barely fluctuates from these ridiculously high figures and money must be pumped into repairing the damage done. Although a lot is being learnt about earthquakes and the fact that humans are now normally able to be alerted in time to evacuate the area the earthquake will affect, there have been no breakthroughs into reducing the amount of damage earthquakes cause to buildings and infrastructures.