Earthquakes: Natural Disasters

Earth has many natural disasters that affect billions of people every year. Whether it is hurricanes, torrential rain, snow storms, or even tornadoes. But there is a natural disaster which unlike the others, is unpredictable. Earthquakes, one of the most feared natural disasters can kill thousands and affect millions when they occur. They can also be a precursor to an even worse event, the tsunami. Tsunamis cause even more damage than earthquakes, and most of the time it is the cause for most deaths after an earthquake. Even with the technology today we cannot predict when and where earthquakes will strike. This alone to me makes earthquakes and tsunamis two of nature’s fascinating and remarkable events. Earthquakes happen in the crust, which

This region, in the pacific, more than 90% of earthquakes happen here. But that is not all, the region is also full of faults, and trenches. The Ring of Fire is filled with plates that are continuously colliding and moving apart. It is also filled with another powerful possible disaster, volcanoes. The ring of fire is filled while volcanoes both active and inactive. Some active volcanoes include the popular Mount Fuji in Japan, Kilauea which is one of the most active volcanoes in the world and Mount St. Helens, located in Washington State, here in the U.S. The ring it is also a hot spot for tsunamis. One of the more notable tsunamis recently include the Indian Ocean tsunami that really devastated Indonesia. An earthquake in the ocean triggered a massive tsunami which was more than 30 meters in height. It killed roughly 200,000 people. Along with many tsunamis, many of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded have taken place in this region. May 22, 1960 in Valdivia Chile the most powerful earthquake ever recorded took place. The earthquake measured a magnitude 9.5 on the moment magnitude scale. A much better scale than the Richter to help us measure magnitude. (Drouet et al., 2011). Earthquakes are measured with magnitude, which is basically how much energy is released during the earthquake. With earthquakes also come aftershocks, usually much smaller earthquakes which is caused by the crust settling into

The earthquake did not cause much damage, due to the setting of the earthquake being Japan, they were prepared. Japan is right in the middle of The Ring Of Fire, so their buildings were more than able to withstand the powerful magnitude 9.0 earthquake that took place and lasted 6 minutes. The earthquake could be felt as far away as Tokyo which is 250 miles from Sendai. Following the main earthquake followed thousands of aftershocks way more than usual (He et al., 2013). Few if any died from the earthquake itself. What caused most of the damage, if not all was the huge tsunami that followed. It only took about an hour after the earthquake to reach Miyagi, Japan. The fast moving tsunami was estimated at about 128 feet high in some places. Destroying everything in its way almost 16,000 people were killed in the tsunami and 2500 are still missing as of March, 2015. As if the tsunami itself did not cause enough damage, it got worse for the Japanese people. Over 4 million people were left without power. Fires were started at oil refineries by the earthquake and continued for more than 7 days. In many places the tsunami hit, most phone signals were down so there were no way to communicate. There were also no ways to travel in cars, with boats and debris on the roads it was made impossible. But the biggest problem earthquake and tsunami caused was the melting of the