Top 25 worst earthquakes

[tornado34jh]

Have a look at this, this is the top 25 worst earthquakes (counting deaths and magnitude), notice that Turkey had another deadly earthquake before the current one (the current one will probably will one of the worst soon if it isn't already). You'll notice either they didn't have earthquake resistance back then or the countries don't have the infrastructure to do so.

https://list25.com/25-worst-earthquakes-in-history/

[Tetrachloride]

1. In my area, every building has rebar into concrete pillars

with red brick.

(During times of weak government, some buildings may not have been up to code. Government clamped down on most of those weak buildings but not all. Or so i have read. I presume the earthquake region is similar.)

[tornado34jh]

3. Interesting

Which area? I was in an earthquake in Virginia in 2011. Not a place you would think an earthquake would be, but there is something called an intraplate earthquake, which this one was one of them.

[Retrograde]

2. The site's a bit of a mess

it seems to mix magnitude, estimated loss of life, and estimated costs of property damage, so smaller quakes that caused a lot of deaths or damage are ranked higher than larger ones in less populated areas. The 1964 Alaska earthquake was the 2nd largest known, but it doesn't make the list because it was in a sparsely populated area. The 1960 Valdiva quake in Chile tops the list by any scale: I live in earthquake country and I can't even conceive of a 9.5 one.

BTW, the tsunami caused by the 2011 Japan earthquake not only reached Hawai'i: it caused damage to harbors in Crescent City and Santa Cruz California. We actually had tsunami alerts and coastal road closures.

[tornado34jh]

4. Yeah I noticed, I don't think they organized it well

I was in an earthquake in Virginia in 2011. We had just gotten back from overseas in Italy, and we were still getting our stuff in. At first, I thought the shaking was from moving stuff, turns out it was an earthquake, one of those intraplate earthquakes. I think the site was kind of jumbled up, but other ones I found were under a paywall, and I have not been successful in getting rid of that, and I was trying to look for a site that counted earthquakes up to 2022.

[Retrograde]

5. The USGS has a site that lists the top 20

earthquakes in order of magnitude - but that only goes down to about 8.5 or so, so the San Francisco quake of 1906 doesn't make the list. I found one site that lists biggish quakes in the US (those about 5 and up).

[tornado34jh]

6. I see

The worst ones are near densely populated areas. Needless to say, I think the site relied more heavily on deaths/destruction. But yes, I am aware that the Great Alaska earthquake was one of the strongest by magnitude. Also, it doesn't count other deadly earthquakes throughout history.

[Tetrachloride]

7. I visited the region 6 years after.

Some abandoned buildings were still standing.

One large area dropped a full meter. Hence, a big tsunami

other areas were lifted. 2nd largest quake in recorded history

Chile has quite a few of the biggest of the past 500 years

[tornado34jh]

8. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami saw some areas rise and drop by at least 50 feet on the sea floor

I remember seeing a documentary of that one, and it was a gigantic rupture. The earthquake in Turkey recently, at 7.8, if it had been a subduction zone (it isn't, it's a transform fault like the San Andreas Fault), and it was over water, depending on much vertical motion it did and the underlying topography/bathymetry, it could have possibly generated a tsunami, at least regionally, as I don't know how far it would have gone (Black Sea or Mediterranean Sea). Of course, neither fault is over water, it is nearly all on land, so it wouldn't happen. That being said, however tsunamis have occurred in the Mediterranean Sea, mainly from volcanic eruptions (e.g. Thira).

[Tetrachloride]

11. Mediterranean is the near one.

here’s a British Broadcasting Corporation link

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-64540696

good clarity

[tornado34jh]

12. I see

But yeah, usually a magnitude 7 or higher earthquake over open water if given the right circumstances (subduction zone, underlying topography) can produce a tsunami

[Tetrachloride]

13. For the Japan Tohoku tsunami warning,

my gf called her brother at my recommendation. He lives in Alaska at a shoreline.

In a previous life, I lived a couple hundred miles south of the main Tohoku damage location. The earthquake occurred about a dozen years after I left.

[tornado34jh]

14. Yeah, anywhere in the Ring of Fire in the Pacific

When there is a major subduction zone earthquake, it can travel from one side of the ocean to another. Hawaii is smack in the middle of it, can get hit from basically 4 directions (South America, Alaska, Japan, and New Zealand/Papua New Guinea).

[LAS14]

9. Fascinating! Thanks. nt

[tornado34jh]

10. The site is a bit jumbled up

But I couldn't find other sites that included ones up to 2022, and other sites I found were under paywall. Also, it does miss a lot of other deadly historical earthquakes.