Earthquake in México 1985

Earthquakes are an abrupt disturbance within the Earth's structure that generate seismic waves. Many earthquakes occur without being noticed by human beings but many are "felt quakes", as the passage of the seismic waves are felt above ground in the form of shaking, ruptures and movement of both the natural and built environments.

Earthquakes are often referred to as quakes, tremors or temblors.[1]

Earthquakes can be minor through to very destructive. This is measured on a scale, to assist with understanding the kind of damage that may occur or have occurred from a particular size of earthquake. The moment magnitude scale is used for earthquakes over 5 reported globally.[1] The Richter scale is used to report local magnitude earthquakes smaller than magnitude 5.[1] The scales are similar in numbers, so that quakes of 3 or under are considered "weak", while quakes over 7 are considered strong and able to cause serious damage, dependent on their depth.[1]

The Mercalli scale measures the intensity of the shaking.[1]

Shallow earthquakes tend to cause greater damage to the built environment but this is dependent on other factors, such as the location, the ground surface, the geological makeup of an area, the strengths and weaknesses of the built environment, and so forth.[1]

Earthquake proofing for buildings[edit | edit source]

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2018 Long-term National Seismic Hazard Map (2018nshm-longterm).jpg

Earthquake-proofing for buildings is an essential issue in geologically unstable areas. In order to assess on whether a region lies in an area where substantial earthquakes occur, we first take a look at the earthquake hazard map. Another thing to realize is that, despite the name, the building can (almost) never be made completely earthquake-proof, in most cases, the house will still suffer damage or may still be destroyed, but the "earthquake-proofing" will prevent or reduce the loss of human lives in the process.

See also[edit | edit source]

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Sources and citations[edit | edit source]

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Keywords natural disaster gallery
Authors Felicity
License CC-BY-SA-3.0
Language English (en)
Related 0 subpages, 5 pages link here
Impact 368 page views
Created May 15, 2008 by Chris Watkins
Modified June 8, 2023 by Felipe Schenone
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