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Kevin ClarkeMarch 15, 2011

For a small indication of what the people in Japan have been enduring, take a gander at this chart of global seismic activity from the U.S. Geological Service. You can find the 9.0 quake that rocked the nation on March 11 at 05:46.

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14 years ago
It is interesting that the New Zealand earthquake that leveled a lot of Christchurch is only listed at 6.3 and the one they had last year as 7.0.  While neither were trivial they are far down the scale from 9.0 and the latest Christchurch earthquake caused a lot of deaths but obviously not nearly as many at the Japan quake.


And from the list on the linked page there seems to be a constant movement of the plates in the area of the original quake and a couple dozen or more of 6.0 quakes which were the size of the Christchurch quake since the 9.0 quake off the coast of Honshu.  My guess is that we will learn a lot more about the effects of earthquakes and the potential damage depending upon the distance from the epi-center.

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