In earthquakes that cause the most damage at what depth would movement along a fault most likely occur?
Shallow earthquakes are the ones that cause more damage, the depth of a shallow earthquake can vary from 1km below the surface to 40km below. Examples of this are the earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand, the Virginia 2011 earthquake, Haiti earthquake in 2010 and so.
How massive is the damage that a 7.8 earthquake could cause to California?
In 2008, the USGS and California worked together and created a drill that proposed such a scenario.Called the Great California Shakeout, the drill, which started at 10:00 in the morning, on November 13, 2008, proposed a scenario, in which a 200-mile long section of the San Andreas Fault ruptures in a magnitude 7.8 earthquake.The scenario proposed that the rupture would last for nearly two minutes. During these two minutes of violent shaking, multiple highways would suffer damage. Multiple pipelines would shatter. Worse, the seismic waves, caused by the release of hundreds of years of strain, would race towards Los Angeles and other major cities. Los Angeles lies on top of a sedimentary basin, so the city would shake for a longer period of time than its smaller companions, perhaps for as long as 55 seconds.The shaking would kill nearly 2,000 people, and injure 53,000. Damages would exceed $200 billion.So, in short, it would be bad.http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/vie...
How much damage can a earthquake cause?
Collapse of buildings and other man made structures such as bridges, overpasses etc. People who are trapped in buildings are likely to,suffer injury - or even death if the building isn’t earthquake proofBuildings collapsed in this Italian earthquake.The Nimitz Freeway after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Many people died in their cars.Roads crack and sometimes collapse or part is raised up many feet above the rest of the road as in the photo below:-New Zealand's Papatea Fault uplift pushed SH1 highway up by over 4 metres in 2016Liquefaction - where soft soil turns to a semi liquid like wet sand causes buildings, cars etc to collapse into it.These buildings in San Francisco’s Marina District collapsed due to liquefaction in 1989.Landslides may mean cliffs, hills, mountains take buildings with them as they crash into the area below. Alternatively, any buildings, cars, bridges or even people in the path of the landslide will be badly affected.Fire Is always a danger following earthquakes. Fire destroyed much of what hadn’t already collapsed in San Francisco in 1906.San Francisco burns following the devastating earthquake of 1906Boxing Day 2004. An earthquake measuring 9.1 hit off the coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra. This caused a tsunami of up to 100 feet high, and caused extreme destruction to buildings, vehicles, roads, railways, bridges, sewer systems, power lines. Thousands of people died. Boats or ships caught up in a tsunami can be carried several miles inland. The 2011 Sendai tsunami even destroyed a nuclear power station!Devastation caused by the 2011 Sendai tsunamiTsunamis also wreck land used for grazing animals or growing crops. The salt renders land unusable for years afterwards..
In earthquakes that cause the greatest damage, at what depth would slippage most likely occur?
The depth to an earthquake's focus is usually classified as either shallow, intermediate or deep. Damaging earthquakes can be created by any depth of focus, it depends on how much movement takes place and what you mean by "damage". I will assume you mean damage to city structures. The most movement along fault zones is typically found with shallow focus earthquakes. So, depending on where they are, they would produce the most damage.
What damage can a 7.5 earthquake magnitude cause?
This is the modified table of mercalli and richter’s scale
What damage would a magnitude 10 earthquake cause?
More than you can imagine. It would be the largest subduction zone earthquake ever since recording of magnitudes began in about 1900 and it would be enormously larger than the largest ever recorded, the one off shore of Bio-Bio, Chile in 1960 a M9.5. If you really are interested in learning about earthquakes study some real ones and don’t ask about the unimaginable. There is zero educational value in learning how not to survive the largest earthquake and tsunami in well over 100 years.
Would earthquakes of same strength cause similar damage in other locations? ?
An earthquake of the same magnitude as the 1906 San Francisco quake would not cause the same amount of damage in a less populated or less developed (as in fewer structures) area. The New Madrid quake of 1811, for example, was a magnitude 8.0, but the area was far less populated than San Francisco in 1906, so it caused far less damage and death. The Richter Scale is not used to express damage. An earthquake in a densely populated area which results in many deaths and considerable damage may have the same magnitude as a shock in a remote area that does nothing more than frighten the wildlife. Large-magnitude earthquakes that occur beneath the oceans may not even be felt by humans. In the past three centuries, major earthquakes outside of California and Alaska generally occurred in sparsely-settled areas, and damage and fatalities were largely minimal. But some took place in areas that have since been heavily built up. Among them are three earthquakes that occurred in 1811 and 1812 near New Madrid, MO. They are among the Great earthquakes of known history, affecting the topography more than any other earthquake on the North American continent. Judging from their effects, they were of a magnitude of 8.0 or higher on the Richter Scale. They were felt over the entire United States outside of the Pacific coast. Large areas sank into the earth, new lakes were formed, the course of the Mississippi River was changed, and forests were destroyed over an area of 150,000 acres. Many houses at New Madrid were thrown down. "Houses, gardens, and fields were swallowed up" one source notes. But fatalities and damage were low, because the area was sparsely settled then.
What kind of damage could earthquake cause in mountainous areas?
Earthquakes in mountainous region can cause plenty of damage. Starting off with severe devastation to structures, landslides, changing the topography of land entirely, etc.A very recent example would be one that happened in Nepal a few months ago which completely devastated the nation and its structures, along with cultural heritage and loss of lives of innocents.The gangetic plain actually lies on a major fault. But, nothing to worry, as the Indo-Australian tectonic plate is actually pushing in into Eurasian plate, making Mount Everest taller by an inch every year.Earthquakes cannot be predicted. Only probabalized. We can take certain steps to avoid ourselves from getting hurt. These include staying in homes that are designed to withstand certain minimum amount of earthquake forces.There is an entire course on emergency management and disaster management, which can explain things that we need to do in case of an emergency like an earthquake.