Earthquake Essay

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I. Introduction to Earthquakes An earthquake is the shaking of the ground caused by sudden release of energy inside the earth's crust. It's the breaking and moving of tectonic plates along a fault line. Earthquakes can range in size from weak where we don't feel them to extremely violent where they actually thow people around and destroy cities. They may be a result of geological faults or other activites such as volcanoes, landslides, mine blasts and nuclear tests. An earthquake is not always naturally caused.
II. How Earthquakes happen Earthquakes are caused by tectonic plates moving in the earth's crust. They either move apart or pull together at faults. Two forms of faults are normal faulting where the hanging wall moves downward causing rocks to be pulled apart by tension and reverse faulting, which is the opposite where the hanging wall moves upward casuing rocks to be forced together by tension. These movements cause tectonic plate boundaries called divergent boundaries, convergent boundaries and transform boundaries. Each boundary is different and play a …show more content…

Primary impacts are the result of the ground shaking causing buildings to collaspe. This than results in the secondary impacts which are usually tsunamis, fires, landslides and other catastrophic events. Tsunamis, a huge wave of water, are one of the worse things human life can face after an earthquake as they are known to destroy absolutely everything in there path. Landslides, another huge destruction, is often known to be worse than the earthquake itself. These can cause whole cities to be completely destroyed as in Alaska, Turnagain Heights. Fires also cause a huge path of destruction. Broken gas lines set gas free making one little spark cause an inferno. An example of this would be the great earthquake of 1906 in San Fransisco which caused 90% fire damage among everything

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