Earthquake is a shaking or trembling of a portion of the earth, is the result of a sudden release of stored energy in the crust of the Earth, witch creates seismic waves. This trembling is measured with seismometer and the magnitude is commonly reported using the Richter scale or a related Moment scale.
The origin of the earthquake can be in the volcanic and tectonic activities. For example Chile is located in one of regions with more seismic activities. Here we can found three important tectonics plates. The marine plate of Nazca, located along the Peruvian-Chilean coast and the plate of South America, it’s covering all continent of South American and plate of Antarctic. These plates (Nazca and South American) converge under the South American plates and the Andes Mountains, forming Peru-Chile Trench, and the southern side is side is a divergent boundary with the Antarctic Plate.
The most common earthquakes in this region are produces by the shaking between Nazca and South American plates. Chile has an average about one earthquake above magnitude 8.0 each ten years. But when the friction was a triple junction with Nazca, South American and Antarctic provoked the Valdivian Earthquake in 1960, also know like “The Great Chilean Earthquake” because is the most powerful earthquake ever recorded, rating 9.5 on the Moment magnitude scale.
This earthquake has its epicenter 10km west of Niebla (near Valdivia), but affect a lot of countries with its tsunami, such as Argentina, Japan, Hawaii, The Philippines, easterm New Zealand and the Aleutian Islands in Alaska.
The consequences was devastating, the death toll and monetary losses arising from such a widespread disaster can never be precisely known. It killed over 2,000 people and another 3,000 people injured and left 2,000,000 homeless. This earthquake provoked changes in geography like new lakes, modifications in the mountain, roads and rivers.
Today in Chile and in the all the world, we can not prevent the earthquake but, we know how prevent the disaster with buildings with special construction to resist an earthquake and everybody know that our country is totally seismic, and we know how can we have to act in this case.
The consequences was devastating, the death toll and monetary losses arising from such a widespread disaster can never be precisely known. It killed over 2,000 people and another 3,000 people injured and left 2,000,000 homeless. This earthquake provoked changes in geography like new lakes, modifications in the mountain, roads and rivers.
Today in Chile and in the all the world, we can not prevent the earthquake but, we know how prevent the disaster with buildings with special construction to resist an earthquake and everybody know that our country is totally seismic, and we know how can we have to act in this case.