Mr.Pike
Period 5
March 19, 2013
Essay
The history of these earthquakes caused major damage in Earthquakes occur every day on Earth, but the vast majority of them are minor and cause no damage. Large earthquakes can cause serious destruction and massive loss of life through a variety of damages can occur including fault rupture, intensive shaking, tsunami, dam failure, landslide and fire or hazardous materials could realease. In a particular earthquake, any of these disasterious events of damage can occur, and historically each has caused major damage and great loss of life, but for most earthquakes shaking is the dominant and most widespread cause of damage.
An earthquake in Japan 8.9-magnitude earthquake hit off the east coast of Japan early today. The quake one of the largest in recorded history triggered a 23-foot tsunami that battered Japan's coast, killing hundreds and sweeping away cars, homes, buildings, and boats.Since the Japan was near an ocean it cause a major tsunami it caused several cities along the coastline to be cleared out and the earthquake in itself caused Japan to move 6.5 inches over it had pretty extensive damage and they rounded that more than 20,000 people died
The Great Alaska Earthquake of 1964 was of 9.2 magnititude it was a four minute duration it which caused landslides and avalanches. 11% of the world earthquakes happen in Alaska but because of the population there was only 115 people that died and there was over 300 aftershock in the following week The Alaskan earthquake generated a tsunami which destroyed a waterfront in Kodiak and caused it to head toward Oregon and California which unfortunately killed 16 people and a spped of 400 miles per hour and was the largest earthquake in terms of magnititude and more than $311 million dollar in damage.
The largest earthquake in history is May 22, 1960 magnititude 9.5 and it left more than 2 million people homeless. Landslides and volcanic activity did contributed a lot to the devastation.
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