The Great Chilean Earthquake And Its Impact On Earth

Earthquakes have the potential to destroy and cause a lot of harm or they just make the ground shake a little. Sometimes earthquakes with low magnitudes cause a lot of harm, and a high magnitude one causes a small amount of damage. This usually isn’t the case. Two Earthquakes with high magnitudes each caused a different amount of damage. These two are the earthquake that happened in Sumatra, Indonesia in December 26, 2004, and the earthquake that happened in Rat Island , Alaska in April 2, 1965.

According to the research report, it will cause thousands of people die, towns submerged, buildings and bridges damaged once a huge earthquake and tsunamis happened on the Pacific Northwest area near American coast. And losses will be estimated at over 5 billion dollar US dollars. This shocking article was composed by seismic safety advisory committee in Oregon. According to materials, a super-strong earthquake once happened in A.D. 1700 Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ) on the Pacific Northwest coast. There are some experts forecast that another super-huge earthquake will occur in the future. The report has shown that once the earthquake occurs, the regions from North California to British Columbia Coastal region will suffer devastation, cause heavy casualties. Water and electricity shortage issues definitely follow this heavy disaster, meanwhile, communication and heating system and gas supply will definitely broken off in the light of this earthquake. The CSZ is a 1,000 km long dipping fault that stretches from Northern Vancouver Island to Cape Mendocino in northern California. It separates the Juan de Fuca (Juan

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).

The right figure gives a more specific visualization of the Juan de Fuca plate currently been forced to slip under the North American plate in an area known as the Cascadia Subduction Zone. Along the boundary of these two plates, a section has become locked yet they are still moving toward each other. As a result, stress has accumulated for centuries and when that stress relieved, it will cause the largest and most powerful earthquake called a megathrust earthquake of magnitude 9.0 or higher. The last earthquake which was caused by the relieved of this stress with similar magnitude happened in 1700. The scientists were able to determine this date through sediment samples that indicated the coast’s seismic past, taken from the sea floor off the coast of Vancouver Island. Therefore, scientist were able to outline that earthquakes occur every 500 to 1000 years.The risk for a possible megathrust earthquake to happen is increasing and it is coming faster than predicted because the stress hasn’t been released recently and the Juan de Fuca and the North American Plates are constantly moving. Right now, Vancouver Island has been tilted higher and squeezed by a few centimetres eastward every year. In the next 50 years, when the strain released, an earthquake called the “Big One” will rip down the west coast from British Columbia to northern California,

Of all the naturally occurring events on Earth, earthquakes are among the most devastating and bring a lot of truth to the statement, “Just because something is natural does not mean it is not dangerous.” Earthquakes are one of the most natural things I can think of that can cause massive damage and loss of human live in many instances, and the effects are sometimes long term. “Nothing happens without a force. Many geophysicists accept the theory that continents move as a result of the forces generated by mantel convection deep within Earth – motions driven by our planet’s internal heat energy” (Trefil & Hazen, 2010). According to National Geographic (1996-2012), constant movement in the tectonic plates that make up the Earth’s

The great earthquake in California on April 18, 1906, killed 3 thousand people. The devastation of earthquakes is tremendous and terrifying. Earthquakes are unpredictable they can happen at any time. Earthquakes can destroy homes and collapse skyscrapers in a matter of seconds. They also start fires destroy water pipes sewage lines.

Megathrust earthquakes are defined as interplate earthquakes caused by one tectonic plate being forced under another in a subduction zone. During the lifetime of a subduction zone, two plates are constantly moving towards each other, and due to the great amount of friction, these plates get “stuck” in various areas 2 (fig 1). Due to the build-up of stress in these areas, the plates eventually unlock and release a great amount of energy, resulting in a megathrust earthquake2.

The Valdivia Earthquake occurred on the 22nd of May 1960 in Valdivia, Chile. It is the most powerful earthquake ever recorded with a magnitude of 9.5. The earthquake resulted in many natural disasters not only in other parts of Chile but in other countries as well.

Breaking news on Fox today, It is May 20,1960 and the ground is shaking. Scientists are saying one of the biggest quakes in the 20th century now happening in Valdivia located in southern Chile. The magnitude, how vast the size of something is, in this case the earthquake was 9.5 and great damage is reported. Now, we are reporting from the remains of the city and are not sure if there is going to be an aftershock,which is an earthquake that occurs after a larger earthquake in the same area. I am your news reporter Dasha Krumer and today I am with Shreya Srihari an expert on earthquakes a seismologist.

The Chile and the Haiti Earthquakes of 2010 had different effects on the health sector. Various differences are evident in the health outcomes of these disasters. In the Chilean earthquake, the magnitude of the quake reached a scale of 8.8 while that of Haiti reached a scale of 7.0. However, the number of deaths that were experienced in Haiti was a number almost 200,000 while in Chile it was only 200 people (Huus, 2010). Despite the high magnitude of the quake, Chile experienced a low number of lost lives.

By definition an earthquake is the tremor of the surface of the Earth, sometimes severe and devastating, which results from shock waves generated by the movement of rock masses deep within the Earth, particularly near boundaries of tectonic plates. The tectonic plates involved in the 2010 Chile earthquake were the Nazca and South American plate, and like all tectonic plates, they often move due to convection currents within the Earth’s mantle. This movement can cause tectonic plates to collide, separate or slide past one another. For thousands of years, the oceanic Nazca plate has been colliding and slowly subducting underneath the continental side of the South American plate. Earthquakes can be caused by a variety of reasons, but the 2010 Chilean earthquake was caused by these two tectonic plates having an ocean-continental collision at a convergent boundary.

According to Brillinger (2011), earthquakes were recorded after happening to get an earthquake statistics. Earthquakes may be large or small, serious or trivial; however, the higher the magnitude, the greater the damage to a particular location and the surrounding area. Earthquakes can also create other natural disasters, like tsunamis and volcanic eruptions, which bring more dangerous disasters than earthquakes. Statistics of earthquakes can be extremely important for it can give governments plans to do rebuilding after earthquakes, can help scientists better detect and anticipate earthquakes, and can provide more information to public to learn about earthquakes. It is helpful to take a look at existed statistics; from the website of US government,

There is one very significant earthquake on the list which happened on March 28 1964. It is world second strongest earthquake ever recorded in human history followed by Chile which happened in 1960. 1964 Alaskan earthquake also known as the great Alaskan earthquake and Good Friday earthquake. From the figure 3, the star shows the location of the epicenter, it was 12.4mi north of Prince William Sound and 78mi east from Anchorage. The depth of it was approximately 15 mi and the tsunamis were created by the ocean floor shifts causing many of the deaths and injuries and $2.3billions today dollars of property lost. The earthquake had the magnitude of 9.2 and it lasted for four minutes and thirty- eight seconds. After the earthquake, one of the major effects was the vertical displacements of 11.5m maximum uplift of subsidence relative to sea level

destruction, as a result of movements within the earth’s crust of volcanic action. Well no parts of the surface of the earth are protected from earthquakes, but some parts of the world experience earthquakes more frequently than others do. You will find that earthquakes are usually most common at tectonic plate boundaries where different plates meet. The largest events usually happen where two plates are colliding or colliding and sliding past one another, particular around the edge of the pacific plate. Large shallow earthquakes also happen where two plates are pulling apart with the creation of new oceanic crust along mid-ocean ridges and on the transform faults that intersect them. Shallow intraplate earthquakes occur in the relatively stable interior of continents away from

     Most of the worst earthquakes are associated with changes in the shape of the Earth's outermost shell, particularly the crust. These so called tectonic earthquakes are generated by the rapid release of strain energy that is stored within the rocks of the crust, which on continents is about 22 miles thick. A small proportion of earthquakes are associated with human activity. Dynamite or atomic explosions, for example, can sometimes cause mild quakes. The injection of liquid wastes deep into the Earth and the pressures