-
- From Colombia to India, Turkey to Taiwan, Mexico, and
now California, 1999 has been the year of the earthquake. More than 20,000
people have died in six serious earthquakes this year, with many thousands
more left injured and homeless.
-
- The worst was in north-western Turkey two months ago,
when more than 16,000 died in the densely populated area around Izmit.
Seismologists said yesterday's quake in California's sparsely populated
Mojave desert would have been "devastating" if the epicentre
had been 100 miles to the west in Los Angeles.
-
- Geologists know where
earthquakes are likely to occur:
the difficulty is predicting when. A
spokesman for the California Institute
of Technology said: "It's
almost impossible to know when they will
come. All we can do is take as
many precautions as we can."
-
- Yet despite the doom-mongers
who blame the approach of
the Millennium for the recent rash of
earthquakes, they are no more likely
now than in the last Millennium,
according to seismologists. The difference
is that more people are at
risk from earthquakes today because there are
more people on the
planet: six billion, as the United Nations said this
week, and growing
by 90 million a year.
-
- Rich countries have helped to cut the potential death
toll in earthquake-prone areas by developing anti-earthquake technology
and constructing "flexible" buildings that sway during tremors,
but remain standing. But this has not happened in poorer countries, where
low-quality buildings, combined with fast-growing populations, has made
them vulnerable to a heavy death toll when an earthquake strikes.
-
- The Turkish
earthquake was much worse than it should
have been because the
government ignored warnings from experts that its
industrial heartland
and tens of thousands of homes were being built on
the highest-risk
earthquake zones. Prof Erdogan Yuzer, president of the
Turkish
committee of the International Association of Engineering Geology,
said: "People don't believe it's going to happen. They don't believe
in science."
-
- The number of potential victims has also been increased
by
large-scale migration from rural areas to towns and cities - many in
coastal areas around the Pacific Rim, including the Americas, China,
Japan,
the Philippines, and Indonesia. Coasts are vulnerable to
earthquakes because
they were formed by the movement of tectonic plates
and remain on fault
lines.
-
- Earthquakes are most likely to occur where a continental
tectonic plate meets an oceanic plate, such as in the Pacific Rim, or
where
a continental plate meets another continental plate, such as in
Turkey.
But some people in California are convinced that the state hasbeen more
vulnerable to earthquakes as a result of American nuclear tests ca
rried
out in the Mojave desert.
-
- Lucy Jones, a seismologist with
the United States Geological
Survey, said the Mojave quake was a fresh
tremor and not a long-delayed
aftershock to the powerful Landers quake,
7.2 on the Richter scale, that
rocked the area in 1992.
-
- The earth is hit by
up to 10,000 quakes every day, according
to geologists. Most do no
damage at all and cause no loss of life, but
around 400 a year are
serious, measuring more than 5.5 on the Richter scale.
-
- Britain is not immune to
earthquakes. There have been
25 earthquakes measuring 4.5 or more on
the Richter scale this century,
but all in remote areas. In 1580, two
people in Britain were killed by
earthquakes in the Dover
Strait.
-
- The cost of repairing the physical damage caused by quakes
is
enormous. Insurers estimate that last year was the most expensive since
records began, with losses totalling $93 billion from all natural
disasters.
This year's figure could be higher.
-
- The United Nations has declared
the 1990s the International
Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction. Last
Wednesday, more than 1,000
British schools took part in an "IDNDR
day" to promote education
about disasters.
-
- 1 October 1999: Mexico City
rocked by earthquake
-
- 23 September 1999: Aftershocks delay desperate hunt for
survivors of quake
-
- 22 September 1999: 4,000 feared dead in quake
-
- 9 September 1999:
Aftershocks keep Athens in the grip
of terror
-
- 8 September 1999: 52 killed
and many hurt as earthquake
rocks Athens
-
- 18 August 1999: Shocks may go
on for months, say scientists
-
- 18 August 1999: 2,000 die in
Turkish earthquake
-
- 26 January 1999: 250 killed as quake hits Colombian
coffee
area
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