Eleven Earthquakes That Changed How We Count Disasters

On 23 January 1556 a magnitude 7.9 earthquake struck the Wei River Valley near Huaxian in Shaanxi, China. Most residents lived in yaodongs, artificial caves cut into loess cliffs, which collapsed on them, and records count about 100,000 direct deaths plus hundreds of thousands more from famine and disease.

The 26 January 1700 Cascadia megathrust quake, estimated at magnitude 8.7 to 9.2, left no written record in North America. Its date was reconstructed from a tsunami recorded in Japan, from tree rings of cedars drowned in ghost forests, and from indigenous oral traditions.

At dawn on 28 December 1908 a magnitude 7.1 earthquake shook the Strait of Messina for 37 seconds, and a tsunami up to 12 meters high followed about ten minutes later. With around 120,000 killed, it remains the deadliest earthquake recorded in European history.

The 1 September 1923 quake of about magnitude 8.0 was in fact three shocks in quick succession. Fires driven by typhoon winds caused about 87 percent of the roughly 105,000 confirmed deaths, and over half of Tokyo and nearly all of Yokohama were destroyed.

This magnitude 7.9 quake off Peru on 31 May 1970 destabilized the northern wall of Mount Huascaran. The resulting debris avalanche of about 80 million cubic meters buried Yungay and Ranrahirca, and the combined toll of 66,794 to 70,000 makes it the deadliest avalanche ever recorded.

A magnitude 7.6 quake hit the industrial city of Tangshan at 3:42 in the morning on 28 July 1976, collapsing or disabling about 85 percent of its buildings. The official toll of 242,469 is disputed by historians who put it at 300,000 or more.

A magnitude 8.0 quake off Michoacan on 19 September 1985 devastated Mexico City about 350 kilometers away, because the soft lakebed soil amplified the shaking. About 5,000 deaths were certified, yet citizen groups claimed up to 30,000 and the National Seismological Service estimated 45,000.

The magnitude 6.9 Loma Prieta quake of 17 October 1989 caused 63 deaths and 3,757 injuries. It ruptured a segment of the San Andreas Fault system that had been relatively quiet since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, a useful contrast with the far deadlier events earlier on this path.

The Great Hanshin earthquake struck at 5:46 in the morning on 17 January 1995 with magnitude 6.9, reaching intensity 7 on the Japan Meteorological Agency scale. Its hypocenter lay 17 kilometers beneath Awaji Island, about 20 kilometers from the center of Kobe, and the tremors lasted about 20 seconds.

The magnitude 8.0 quake of 12 May 2008 ruptured more than 240 kilometers of the Longmenshan Fault. It killed 69,196 people by official count and triggered roughly 200,000 landslides that dammed rivers into more than 800 temporary quake lakes.

The Gorkha earthquake of 25 April 2015, magnitude 7.8 to 7.9, was shallow at about 8 kilometers depth, which intensified the shaking. It killed at least 8,857 people in Nepal and caused about 10 billion dollars in damage, roughly half of the country's annual economic output.