Geography 2240A/B Lecture Notes - Mercalli Intensity Scale, United States Geological Survey, Megathrust Earthquake

• School: Western University
• Department: Geography
• Course: Geography 2240A/B
• Professor: Philip Egberts

Document Summary

An accounting of the worst natural disasters in historical time places earthquakes and their consequences well within the 10 deadliest of processes. For example, in 1201 a devastating earthquake roared through syria and egypt killing approximately 1. 1 million people. The population density in 1201 was rather dramatically less than now, so this was certainly an awesome catastrophe. The worst earthquake in china which experiences many seems to have been in 1556 when about 830,000 were killed in shansi province. Almost every month we read of someone killed by falling structures loosened by an earthquake. Of course, the deadly tsunami of december 2004 with a dead + missing and presumed dead toll of about 250,000 was instigated by an enormous earthquake. The earthquake in haiti in 2010 was truly a disaster; had the country not been so poor, had infrastructure not been so weakly constructed, and had the government been even mildly adequate, it might have remained a disaster.