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What Are The Importance Of Earthquakes
An essay on the effect of natural disasters
An essay on the effect of natural disasters
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Recommended: What Are The Importance Of Earthquakes
Deen Altawil
Professor Robert Franklin
Geography 180
October, 11, 2017
Shaking Grounds of Mother Nature
Recently we have been exposed to many natural disasters. Mother Nature has been unpredictable and cannot be stopped. We have witness many hurricanes, bizarre weather changes, and recent earthquakes. All of this impact of Mother Nature left a tremendous effect in our lives. My research paper focuses on “Earthquakes”. How do we define earthquakes?. According to Oxford dictionary “Earthquake is a sudden violent shaking of the ground, typically causing great destruction, as a result of movements within the earth's crust or volcanic action”. Earthquakes always been considered as one of many epitome of natural disasters that changes many lives, earthquakes causes
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The Northridge earthquake occurred on January 17, 1994 at 4:30am,the quake was caused by the sudden rupture of a previously undocumented blind thrust fault, it hit a magnitude of 6.7, the earthquake was so strong parts of Los Angeles area, Ventura area, Las Vegas, and San Diego felt the shake of the earthquake, there were many fatalities about 60 deaths, and 2000 injuries. This earthquake caused widespread damage that included damages to freeways, apartment buildings collapsing, gas stations caught on fire, and thousands of homes were severely damaged. It was so awful it took billions of dollars to repair damages and to rebuild. The San Francisco occurred on April, 18, 1906 at 5:12 am. This earthquake magnitude was at 7.8. This earthquake was the greatest devastation of all time. More than 3,000 people died, the city of San Francisco was about 80% damaged. Not only the city suffered this massive earthquake but the city has to deal with dozen of aftershock. There were many massive buildings on fire, the damages was horrific that it cost billions to rebuild the city. It was named one of the worst tragedy that humankind ever experienced. The Northridge Earthquake
In 1910 a series of fifty-two earthquakes struck Arizona between September 10th-23rd and it caused much of the Flagstaff residents to flee the area as even strong households cracked and chimneys crumbled. The fifty-two earthquakes were all light-shock earthquakes with magnitudes between 4.0-4.2 that came right after another. If only one earthquake occurred in that timespan then it is likely that only objects would be knocked from shelves but no damage would be done to infrastructure, but the earthquakes happened right after another causing significant slight
The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake hit the Northern California coastline. The San Andreas fault shook 296 miles of the coast causing major damage throughout San Francisco, destroying about 80% of the city. Fires broke out throughout the city that lasted for several days. This was one of the worst Earthquakes recorded in history, killing 3,000 people.("The Great 1906 San Francisco Earthquake")
Drea Knufken’s thesis statement is that “As a society, we’ve acquired an immunity to crisis” (510-512). This means that humans in general, or citizens of the world, have become completely desensitized to disasters, we think of them as just another headline, without any understanding of their impact upon fellow
Earthquakes in California are certainly not a surprise. What is a surprise is their unpredictability and randomness. Geologists say there is roughly a 50 percent chance that a magnitude 8 or more quake will hit the Los Angeles area sometime over the next 30 years. And, over the past twenty years, the Los Angeles area has witnessed several earthquakes, and in particular, two that were quite devastating; the 1971 San Fernando earthquake, and the January 17, 1994, Northridge Earthquake. Given the certainty that earthquakes will occur, they still seem to come as a surprise, and leave many communities unprepared to deal with their aftermath.
On the night of April 18, 1906, the whole town was woken by erratic shaking. Although the earthquake lasted under a measly minute, it caused significant damage. Many fires started all throughout the city; San Francisco burned in turmoil.
Ten million California residents who lived closely from the major fault lines could have been endangered in many extreme ways. (House, 56). A tragic thing was that after the earthquake a multitudes of fire followed right after. The situation led to the water mains being destroyed and the firefighter being left with no water to settle the growing fire which continued blazing. The bay water was planned on putting all of the dure out but it was to far in distance to be able to transport it (Earthquake of 1906, 2). The firefighters who were putting out the fire were either surrounded or being burned by the fire that was blazing in all directions (San Francisco Earthquake, 2). A resident who was present during the event mention that he/she saw men and women standing in a corner of a building praying, one person who became delirious by the horrific ways that were surrounding him while crying and screaming at the top of his lungs “the Lord sent it, the Lord”. Someone also mentioned that they experience themselves seeing Stones fall from the sky and crushing people to death. Reporters say there were 100 cannons going off (San Francisco Earthquake, 3). People who lived fifty miles away from the fire was able to “read the newspaper at
I found this article in the GCC database. I found it extremely helpful because I found direct numbers of the devastation. All other articles could not conform the area that was effected and I have found it in this article.
Congress also dealt with the business owners asking for reimbursements from their lost properties (National Archives, 2016). After a year and a half of the disaster, the city spent $90 million on reconstruction (“Quick facts about the 1906 earthquake and fires,” 2008).
On August 29th 2005, Hurricane Katrina, a category 3 storm, slammed into the Gulf Coast. In it’s wake, Katrina left a trail of destruction that killed over 1800 people and cost an estimated 108 billion dollars in damages, making it the most destructive natural disaster in US history. Right in the path of the most powerful part of the storm was the city of New Orleans. (Hurricane Katrina)
covers the area, causing people, animals, and structures to practically disintegrate. Even years afterwards people were still dying and having
Before examining the Northridge event, understanding the naturally occurring hazard that is an earthquake will help to better understand exactly what happened and why it was such an important geological event. With four distinct layers, two layers, the crust and upper portion of the mantle, compose the skin that is the surface layer of the Earth. The crust is not a single, continuous piece. It is actually several different pieces, or plates, that come together to form the puzzle that comprises the surface of the Earth. These plates are in constant motion rubbing against one another. These areas, known as fault lines, where the plates rub up against one another have spots where one plate ”gets stuck while the rest of the plate keeps moving. When the plate has moved far enough, the edges unstick and is how most of the earthquakes around the world occur” (Wald, 2012). The energy stored from the friction of the two plate...
More than five thousand people attended the funeral. Hundreds of lawsuits were filed and many of them were won. The explosion damaged one hundred million dollars worth of buildings, parks, hospitals, and many other things. Congress granted Texas City seventeen million dollars to repair the town and start to rebuild. And another way that people helped out was by doing fundraisers for the city.
The Great Kanto Earthquake also known as the Tokyo-Yokohama Earthquake of 1923 hit the metropolitan area of Kanto on September 1st, 1923 around 11:58 pm. It was a 7.9 on the Richter magnitude scale, killing over one-hundred and forty thousand people due to its high magnitude and the time it happened. The earthquake struck around lunch time, when many Japanese people were at home cooking at their charcoal or gas fueled stoves. At the moment the earthquake hit, it knocked down buildings that caught flames from the stoves that fell over, enflaming the city. The fire was swept up and able to spread due to the gusts of wind that occurred for two days afterwards, resulting in firestorms. Charles Blauvelt experienced the ordeal of the fire describing the flames as “[covering] the whole city [as they] burned all day and night.” In addition to the firestorms and the earthquake itself, there was a shock because of all the fallen debris which triggered tsunamis to fill and flood Japanese cities. These tsunamis, that were about thirty feet tall, destroyed central Tokyo and immensely added to the death toll.
It was known as the great Alaska earthquake. On March 27, 1964, an earthquake with a magnitude of 9.2 struck the Prince William Sound region of Alaska. This earthquake is the second largest earthquake ever recorded in the world, the first as a magnitude 9.2 in Chile in 1960. In other words, this earthquake released 10 million times more energy than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima Japan. Equally important, this (Abby Lautt) earthquake produced landslides and caused catastrophic damage covering an area of 130,000 square kilometers, which is the entire state of Alaska, parts of Canada and Washington. The earthquake lasted approximately four minutes with eleven substantial after shock occurring over the next 24hrs causing damages in the amount of almost $400,000 and killed 131 people.
It not only destroyed the homes of the people who lived there but it also messed with their head. It caused then to think differently and jump to conclusions. Though they eventually recovered the emotional and mental damage stuck with them.