Talk:List of earthquakes

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[edit] GMT or local time?

It's a little odd to use GMT to list the earthquakes instead of local time. For instance the devastating Taiwan earthquake of 1999 happened on September 21 local time, and became known simply as "921" locally much as the terrorist attacks in the USA became known as 9/11. Yet it is listed as happening on 9/20, since that was GMT. So to know what time of day it happened you have to convert the timezones. Wouldn't it be better to go through this list and change all the times to local time with timezone attributions? 68.162.109.30 15:48, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Which earthquakes to include?

Los Angeles quake .. I think in 1971 was 6.1 ... should it be on this summary... EdMc

Approximately 120 earthquakes that size happen each year, it is not feasible to list all of them. Was there anything particulary noteable about that earthquake? Did it cause a lot of destruction? -- Popsracer 23:01, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

So what is the lower limit to the strength of an earthquake to merit addition to this list? If there is a specific limit then I would suggest removing those currently listed without magnitudes as they may be below that limit. SD6-Agent 17:29, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)

There's no hard and fast number, but it needs to either be "major" in strength (somewhat subjective, but I'd put it in the high 6.x's), or be particularly notable in damage or other events. Basically, any earthquake that'd be interesting to read about five years from now. As for the ones without magnitudes, they're mostly historical ones, which should stay as they're clearly well-known enough to still be known about centuries later. --Delirium 19:50, Oct 15, 2003 (UTC)

It killed 14 people, which is more than the quakes of 29-Jun-1925 or 21-Jul-1952 which are on the list. It is the 10th deadliest earthquake in the US since 1900. It was magnitude 6.6. It was not terribly damaging but did cause the collapse of some modern highway bridges and the modern Olive View Hospital in Sylmar, causing considerable change in building codes. http://www.lafire.com/famous_fires/710209_SylmarEarthquake/1971-0500_SF-EqEdition_1971SFEarthquake.htm --Ttulinsky 00:01, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Matthew White says in http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/quakes.htm : July 28, 1976 Tangshan, China. 242-800,000

He also says this earthquake was the worst single day in human history, and he's generally not wrong. So I think the 242 769 number is probably a severe understatement.

Some other site, http://www.geo.arizona.edu/K-12/azpepp/education/history/china/ says the number is closer to "half a million", which is similar to the half-way point of Matthe White's number. There are other pages quoting the 240 000 a lot and more giving upper ranges of 500 000. So I'll uhm... casually approximate the deaths of hundreds thousand of people and change the number to 400 000.

I think that all the 2003 earthquakes should be off the list as there is nothing major about any of them. Rmhermen 23:27, Dec 23, 2003 (UTC)

Note how the USGS lists earthquakes by magnitude (definition) as 'major' (7.0-7.9) and 'great' (>=8.0). This might be a good distinction to adopt here. Peter Ellis 14:20, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Also the May 25-27 1980 Mammoth Lakes quakes should be removed, they are 6's and caused no deaths. They caused a lot of interest at the time because they are near a popular California ski area and with a dormant volcano. --Ttulinsky 00:10, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Major earthquakes

It'd be nice to have a list of earthquakes by intensity as well. When news sources were reporting that "this is the 4th largest earthquake this century", there was no source to turn to to verify that data.

Yes, see the USGS page about the 10 largest earthquakes since 1900, linked to from 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. See USGS Past Earthquakes page, under "Top 10 lists". -- Curps 04:12, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] missing quake: Italy 23 Nov 1980 killed 4800

Seems to be missing from all lists on this page. It is listed in the Wikipedia for news of 1980 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980 ):

"November 23 - A series of earthquakes in southern Italy kills approximately 4,800 people."

This death toll makes it the second most deadly earthquake in a developed country since 1950 (after Kobe 1995), and the deadliest in Europe.

[edit] "Significant" Earthquakes-split into 3 objective lists

The list could be changed from a subjectivly chosen list of "Significant" earthquakes with unclear criteria, to a quantitative list, by splitting it into 3 lists:

Most Deadly Earthquakes-World
Most Deadly Earthquakes-Developed Countries
Largest Earthquakes by Magnitude

That would include most of the quakes on the Significant list. Making the list criteria quantitative is an improvement in my opinion.

This would also satisfies the desire of many readers to see the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 or the Northridge quake of 1994 in a list of major earthquakes when they do not make any list of major earthquakes by size or number of deaths.

--Ttulinsky 23:50, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Positive and negative longitudes

I always thought it was standard to use negative numbers for EAST longitude and positive for WEST. That's the opposite of what this article does. Was I mistaken in what I thought was standard, or is there a reason to deviate? (I once hear the head of the math department at MIT (David Vogan, who has since been succeeded as department head), speaking before about 150 undergraduates, state that it's appropriate that longitudes in Europe are negative since Europe is a cultural cesspool. No one responded that east longitudes are positive and west negative. (Nor did anyone complain about that characterization of Europe.) So I'm not the only one to think that's standard.) Michael Hardy 01:10, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This is pretty basic knowledge, but I'm glad you brought this up, because I was able to fix this glaring error in the longitude article. You don't have to believe me though:

—Cantus…☎ 07:24, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)

While this may be a long dead issue I've always had a high view of MIT. However given the above charaterization of a former math department head and the undergraduates there, I wonder whether I should modify my opinion. Other then the glaring error and the rather silly characterization of Europe, the above also completely ignores the fact that in fact a significant part of the world is in West longitudes including Asia, most of Oceania, and a significant part of Africa. Of course, if the above characterization of David Vogan is true, perhaps he didn't even know Asia, Oceania or Africa existed or thought they didn't matter. It also ignores the issue as raised of east being right as on a cartesian coordinate system (I assume David didn't claim that south is positive). However most significantly perhaps, east being positive makes most sense considering the rotation of the earth (think of why timezones to the east of the GMT are +). However perhaps I'm being unfair to the students. Having been a student myself, I recognise they might have just decided to ignore the idiot rather then make a fuss about someone who was clearly wrong and seemingly a bit stupid. Nil Einne 17:46, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ashkhabad earthquake

Why Ashkhabad's (Turkmenistan now, than USSR) earthquake is not in the list? It happened in 1948, night 5-6 october. It caused 110,000 deaths by official sources (180,000 by other sourses: http://www.scgis.ru/russian/cp1251/dgggms/2-98/nikonov1.htm), magnitude 7.5 (up to 10.0 by other sources: http://geo.1september.ru/1998/geo41.htm). 98% of building in the city were distroyed.

Komap 16:34, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] More missing major earthquakes-outside US

[edit] Empty fatalities column

If the fatalities column is empty, does that mean "0" or "Unknown" ?

It means 0

[edit] Order of material

Having just looked at this page a number of things strike me as odd in how the material is ordered:

Most recent Earthquakes are way down the page.
Wouldn't the "records" (top 10 casualties, top 10 magnitude) be better near the top?
Wouldn't a reverse date order make more sense?

Having made these comments, here is the ordering I propose: Most recent (reverse date, newest 10? only), Top 10 Casualties, Top 10 Magnitude, All major earthquakes (if someone feels like taking the time to reverse date this, go right ahead, but it isn't for me), non-USGS listed. I'm willing to make the change, but I'd like feedback before doing it as to whether it's a good idea. --Random Chaos 22:52, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The 1201 Syria Earthquake

I have just looked through the list of the deadliest earthquakes. I am appaled that the July 5, 1201 Upper Egypt or Syria earthquake that killed 1,100,000 is not in there!!

Was it in Upper Egypt or was it in Syria? Upper Egypt means the south of Egypt and is a long way away from Syria. Anthony Appleyard 06:05, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

The earthquake is indeed listed. However the above is a relevant point. Upper Egypt and Syria are not the same thing, not even close so calling it Upper Egypt or Syria is a bit confusing. Did it affect both Upper Egypt and Syria (and everything in between) or what? Nil Einne 17:57, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Anthony Appleyard's edits

# (cur) (last)  08:43, 21 October 2005 Cantus (return to established version)
# (cur) (last) 07:58, 21 October 2005 Anthony Appleyard (rev vandalism (someone added a pointer to a videogame))

In this part of this page's editing history, I can understand Cantus reverting to his version. But my reasons for my edits are:-

In a table with many columns and many rows, wide margins waste much space, and make the table sprawly, and make table entries fold onto another line of text when they need not fold, thus also creating a blank extra line in all other boxes in that row of boxes.
For the same reason I replaced United States by USA everywhere (which is the usual form used in a list of addresses), and "northwest" etc by the very well known useful abbreviations "NW" etc, since Wikipedia's editor has been moaning that this file is too big (40 kilobytes).
For the same reason I removed the line break in the frequent table entry "Turkey see NAFZ"

Anthony Appleyard 06:32, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Where the fuck is "Sua-ho" Taiwan?

I LIVE in Taiwan and have never heard of Sua-ho. That's not even Chinese. Could someone actually confirm what the hell that's talking about so it can be changed to something not completely WRONG?

While the above poster could have been more polite, it appears he/she may have a point as the only mention of Sua ho I can find on Google appear to be from wikipedia and copiers/mirrors. Of course, it's possible it's just the name for a small place in Taiwan that is really hard of or spoken about. Nil Einne 17:31, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] chilean earthquakes

En la lista faltan algunos terremotos muy importante ocurridos en Chile, como por ejemplo el de 1985 en la zona central del pais, el cual destruyo muchas estructuras en Valparaiso y Santiago, y dejo mas de 1.000.000 de damnificados.

Tambien falta uno que ocurrio en Valdivia el dia 21 de Mayo de 1960, el dia anterior al famoso terremoto de Valdivia.

Sorry for say it in spanish, but my english is not very good. -(Anonymous author)

Here is a rough translation of the above Spanish:

The list lacks some very important earthquakes that happened in Chile, like for example one that occurred of 1985 in the central zone of Pais, which destroyed many structures in Valparaiso and Santiago, and I left 1,000,000 victims. The list also is missing one that occurred in Valdivia on the 21st of May of 1960, one day before the famous earthquake of Valdivia.

I hope I accurately translated what the above person was trying to say. --Cab88 17:47, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lack of links

Practically none of the tables in this article contain links to the earthquakes' articles. I added some for the deadliest-earthquakes table. Without these, the article is close to useless! Jdorje 23:10, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 1957 Daly City (San Francisco suburb) earthquake

How about the 5.3 earthquake in Daly City, California (just south of San Francisco) on March 22, 1957? At the time, I believe it was the biggest quake in the S.F. area since 1906. Richwales 19:49, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake

Why is the magnitude listed as 9.0-9.3? As far as I can tell from the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake page, while the original magnitude was 9.0, all sources have since upgraded it to between 9.1-9.3. Is there any source that still lists it as 9.0? If not, surely we should list it as 9.1-9.3 NOT 9.0-9.3? Nil Einne 17:55, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lima, 1746

Lima, Peru was hit badly by an earthquake on October 28, 1746, and is mentioned on the 1746 page. Alpheus 06:04, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism

Watch out for vandalism, I'm not registered, so I'm not gonna edit, but someone fix that unibrow thing in the table. Thank you.

[edit] 26 Dec 2006 Taiwan Earthquake

The earthquake (on the 26 Dec 2006 which happens 91km SSE of Koahshiung, Taiwan) not only interrupted phone services but also interrupted internet services in many parts of Asia like Taiwan, Japan & Singapore. This is the source. Aranho 13:08, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

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