Earthquakes are one of the most destructive forces known to mankind. An earthquake can have enough power to destroy an entire city and has the potential to be felt 1000 miles away. An earthquake is a series of vibrations induced in the earth’s crust by the abrupt rupture and rebound of the rocks in which elastic strain has been slowly accumulating. Earthquakes happen along vault lines like the San Andres Fault. A fault plane is the surface of a fault fracture along which the rocks have been displaced.
An earthquake is measured by the Richter scale based off of the strength of its vibrations. The scale goes from 1 being the lowest to 10 being the highest. A ten would devastate any city or state even that would be so unfortunate to be a part of. These vibrations are measured by seismographs. Even the best of these seismographs only give a few second maybe a couple minutes warning which is nowhere near enough time to warn a society and give them time to prepare for the forces that come with an earthquake.
California lies along the San Andres Fault and is very densely populated. Due to these factors there are in desperate need of an early warning system. It is predicted that there will be a massive earthquake to hit California in the next 100-200 years and an early warning system would be crucial for human safety for this magnitude of an earthquake. In this paper I will talk about the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 that measured a 7.8 on the Richter scale. I will also explain today’s and the future’s types of earthquake predictions, how successful they are and how soon it is predicted that humans will be able to accurately predict an earthquake with enough time to warn and evacuate cities and how this could have been used to save lives in 1906.
Sources
The Great 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/nca/1906/18april/index.php
Predicting Earthquakes, The National Research Council, Panel of earthquake prediction http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=w0IrAAAAYAAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=predicting+earthquakes&ots=IP-PrXc3TO&sig=i0wILZWIo-_rC3cFyQOUisEETYc Remembering the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, Renee Montagne http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5334411 The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, Regional History from the National Archives http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/sf-earthquake-and-fire/ Some sources may be added as I continue to do more research and write the paper, any changes will be notified. The sources will also be put into correct format as I finalize the sources.
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