Earthquake Impacts Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Earthquake Impacts - Essay slipAlthough more times than not temblors are tectonic, they foundation also occur in volcanic regions.Although umteen people seem to think that the only quakes that take place are those which can be felt, that whimsy is completely false. Instead, large numbers of earthquakes take place daily across the world, but the majority of these can only be felt by seismometers and cannot be felt by the person and cause no geomorphologic damage of any sort. The strength and damage caused by an earthquake can vary dramatically, depending on the strength of the earthquake. Smaller earthquakes may go completely unnoticed, while larger earthquakes can cause grave destruction and massive loss of life. In fact, most of the larger earthquakes are then followed by small one(a)s - these are otherwise known as foreshocks or aftershocks foreshocks existence smaller earthquakes which precede the larger earthquake, and aftershocks being those which procede it.The first method of recording earthquakes was through of certain scales called intensity scales. The United States, Japan, and Europe each postulate their own form of scales. However the problem with all of these scales is that they are often a poor pulse for the relative size of different events in different places. Seismologists now favor a measure called the seismic movement, which relates to the concept of moment in physics, to measure the size of a seismic source. The 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake - which is commonly referred to as the Kobe earthquake due to the fact that it took place near Kobe, one of Japans largest and most populated cities - was one of the most devastating earthquakes to ever hit Japan. Although over ten years have passed now since this earthquake hit, it is motionlessness considered to be one of the most disastrous ever to hit Japan since the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923, and will not soon be forgotten. In due to this earthquake, more than 5,500 people were ki lled, with more than 26,000 leftfield injured. The total economic loss was estimated as being approximately $200 billion USD. During this earthquake, it was recorded that the nation moved 7 inches in horizontal shaking, and 4 inches in the vertical direction, and the earthquake itself is actually still active, with 716 aftershocks recorded by 10 AM as of January 18, 1996, 74 of these could be felt by the kind body, and 14 of these occurred on the 18th. The epicenter of the earthquake was 20km underneath the island of Awaji, across a strait from Kobe. With a magnitude of 6.9 (Mw) and a duration of roughly 20 seconds, in regards to the structural damage caused by the earthquake, there were 144,032 buildings destroyed by ground shaking, 7,456 buildings destroyed by fire, 82,091 collapsed buildings, and 86,043 severely damaged buildings. All Kobe ports were shut down to multinational shipping, there was substantial damage to containing loader piers, and all access to Kobe via high way and railway were blocked.The Kobe earthquake strike early in the morning without any warning, taking the city completely by surprise. It was due to the city of Kobes high population density and linear layout, that there was such substantial damage and trauma caused al-Qaida networks were made much less redundant because of this, and this was a key factor in the significant structural