The Biggest Quakes in Recorded History
1 | May 22, 1960 | 9.5 | ||
2 | March 27, 1964 | 9.2 | ||
3 | December 26, 2004 | 9.2 | ||
4 | November 4, 1952 | 9.0 | ||
5 | August 13, 1868 | 9.0 | ||
6 | January 26, 1700 | 9.0 | ||
Some folks don’t count quakes 5 and 6 above (Wikipedia), because there weren’t proper seismographs available at the time, but to the people living at the time… however sparsely populated the regions may have been, I bet a lot of residents found a new appreciation for God. Maybe they didn’t face the fact of an explosion in an overheated nuclear power plant (now in actual meltdown… remember Chernobyl?), as did Japan on the day after the March 11th 8.9 (Richter scale) quake in the northeastern section of the country, but I am sure they were terrified.
Having lived through big California shakers – nothing compared to the Japanese quake – I can tell you how absolutely helpless you feel, how fear and shock course through your system…. At the moments of impact, I lost my glasses in the 1994 temblor, stepped out of my bed onto broken glass, couldn’t find a light, heard crashes all around me and fell onto the floor … the house was severely damaged, and I had to move out for 6 months while repairs were implemented. But what I experienced was nothing compared with people living in and around Sendai, Japan who faced death, destruction and sweeping waves of tsunami-driven water all around them. Walls of bitterly cold water crushed through homes, ripped out roads and bridges and toppled commercial structures in their path. Fires erupted everywhere. Tsunami warnings were issued for the entire Pacific.
Predictions of thousands of deaths will linger for the time it takes to dig through the rubble, as initial reports (Kyoto News Service) suggested that 88 thousand people were “missing.” The March 12th NY Times reported: “Walls of water whisked away houses and cars in northern Japan, where terrified residents fled the coast. Train service was shut down across central and northern Japan, including Tokyo, and air travel was severely disrupted. A ship carrying more than 100 people was swept away by the tsunami, Kyoto News reported… The government evacuated thousands of residents in a two-mile radius around a nuclear plant about 170 miles northeast of Tokyo and declared a stat e of emergency after a backup generator failed, compromising the cooling system. So far, the chief government spokesman, Yukio Edano, said no radiation leaks had been detected.”
Although Japan has ten times the seismic activity of California, they both straddle opposite sides of the Pacific Plate (that floating “tectonic” section of the earth that covers the vast area of the Pacific Ocean and the surrounding countries), which is the most active seismic area on earth. It includes 450 volcanoes and is moving 4 inches per year… which is why a 100 years of activity can create quite a shake. The area around that plate, measuring about 25,000 miles, is known as the “Ring of Fire,” and is where most of that seismic activity is concentrated. The recent Canterbury (New Zealand) quakes of September 4, 2010 (7.1) and February 22, 2011 (6.3), sitting on that same “Ring,” also inflicted massive damage and killed over 166 people (they’re still finding more bodies!).
Another huge (9.2) March quake (the 27th, 1964, pictured above) occurred along the same “Ring of Fire” that shook Japan this month: The Great Alaskan Quake, the biggest quake ever to hit the United States. Hitting areas not quite as densely populated as Sendai, the Alaskan shaker didn’t kill as many people, but the relative damage was still horrific: “Most damage occurred in Anchorage, 75 mi (120 km) northwest of the epicenter. Nine people w ere killed, the only deaths directly attributed to the earthquake. Anchorage was not hit by tsunamis, but downtown Anchorage was heavily damaged, and parts of the city built on sandy bluffs overlying ‘Bootlegger Cove clay’ near Cook Inlet, most notably the Turnagain neighborhood, suffered landslide damage. The Government Hill school suffered from the Government Hill landslide leaving it in two jagged, broken pieces. Land overlooking the Ship Creek valley near the Alaska Railroad yards also slid, destroying many acres of buildings and city blocks in downtown Anchorage. Most other areas of the city were only moderately damaged. The 60-foot concrete control tower at Anchorage International Airport was not engineered to withstand earthquake activity and collapsed, killing one employee.
The hamlets of Girdwood and Portage, located 30 and 40 mi (60 km) southeast of central Anchorage on the Turnagain Arm, were destroyed by subsidence and subsequent tidal action. Girdwood was relocated inland and Portage was abandoned. About 20 miles (32 km) of the Seward Highway sank below the high-water mark of Turnagain Arm; the highway and its bridges were raised and rebuilt in 1964-66... Most coastal towns in the Prince William Sound, Kenai Peninsula, and Kodiak Island areas, especially the major ports of Seward, Whittier and Kodiak were heavily damaged by a combination of seismic activity, subsidence, post-quake tsunamis and/or earthquake-caused fires. Valdez was not totally destroyed, but after three years, the town relocated to higher ground 7 km (4 mi) west of its original site.” Wikipedia.
But as the days pass, as the reports of death, damage and repair dwindle and the earth focuses back on other issue-laden areas around us, we will soon forget the pain of loss suffered by those Japanese citizens who, on March 11th, were injured, lost loved ones and whose lives will never be the same... as they struggle to recover from a lot more than a bad economy. Thought about Haiti recently, by the way? It is the nature of life. On the day you die, the earth probably won’t give much of a notice.
I’m Peter Dekom, and it never ceases to amaze me how quickly priorities change when nature disaster or major health issues crash into human lives.
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