BE OKAY, JAPAN.

[whynot]

Japan earthquake, 8.9 on the Richter, TSUNAMI, approx 300 dead. It has hit North America. Watch it live on BBC.

- The American Red Cross is taking donations.
- If you are in the US, texting 90999 to REDCROSS donates $10.
- Person Finder: Japan Earthquake 2011. If you are looking for or have information about people in Japan affected by the earthquake, try here. It's currently tracking 7200 records.
- help_japan. ETA: help_japan, not a DW mirror.

What is the deal with the increased frequency of geological disaster in recent years? What causes that? I'm looking at this list of killer quakes in the past century, and while I am irritated that last October's Indonesia double whammy has been left out, the list still shows a worrying trend. Why is our planet going tectonically insane? What the hell is going on?

Hang in there, Japan.

Comments

[claudiapriscus.livejournal.com]

I don't think the frequency of the big quakes is increasing, I just think we're keeping better records. They've left off a lot of those big quakes that didn't hit very populated areas- I know that there was a huge earthquake in the 60s in Alaska, because my mother remembers the tsunami warnings that resulted.

If you look at the less recent ones, they basically only report the a) really, really, really big ones and/or b) the ones that happened in the US/Europe. Part of that is due to technology (both in being able to detect quakes and in also hearing news of them). Another part of it, I think, has to do with population. You've got more densely populated cities, and you have the way buildings are constructed. A quake that might kill 10,000 in China might only kill a few people if it had happened in Japan.

Or, for another example, the New Madrid earthquake of 1812 (epicenter was in Missouri) which is estimated to have been around a 7.0 did not really hurt that many people. If it went off today, the death toll would be in the thousands and thousands and the infrastructure would be extremely, extremely damaged, because a lot of people live there in buildings not built to withstand earthquakes. If a similar quake happened in the San Francisco Bay Area....well, it kind of did. Just look at the Loma Prieta quake of '89. It killed about 60 people and caused some damage. Most of those deaths were due to the collapse of a double-deck elevated freeway, which has since been removed.

Tl;dr- So a hundred years ago, the chances of having a big quake might be the same, it's just that now there's a better chance of a lot of people and possibly a lot of people in non-seismically retro-fitted buildings being there.

[twoskeletons.livejournal.com]

True. I reckon in addition to this is increased access to the global information network too, to spread the word and learn of it.

[claudiapriscus.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, definitely.


Though all that said, a 9.0 earthquake with a 5 minute duration is just so far beyond my comprehension. I grew up in the San Francisco bay area, i'm no stranger to earthquakes but this one....it's like some mythical monster. It doesn't seem actually possible.