Sunday, Jan. 24, 2010 - 7:23 p.m.
Earthquake Letter from a Friend
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It's hard to explain how "big" a quake is, without comparing to other quakes. Since you've not experienced a quake, I'll do my best.
The richter scale is a base 10 system, thus a 5.0 quake is ten times stronger than a 4.0.
Back in the day, folks in the Los Angeles area were constantly being warned about "The Big One," that would supposedly be at least 7.0.
Last year's quake in Sumatra (Indonesia) that killed roughly 1100 people was a 7.6.
The Indonesian Ocean Quake of 2004 was just over 9.0; it created Tsunamis that killed more than 230,000.
What was the largest quake ever recorded since the development of seismography?
From:
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-biggest-earthquake-ever-recorded.htm
Thanks to the extensive records of the United States Geological Service (USGS), it is quite easy to learn about the biggest earthquake ever recorded, which occurred near Santiago, Chile, in 1960. Known as the Great Chilean Earthquake, the quake measured an impressive 9.5 on the Richter scale. The death toll of the Great Chilean Earthquake is not known, but estimates go as high as 6,000, and the earthquake may have caused as much as 800 billion US Dollars in damage.
To give you a better idea of this quake's significance in context, I pulled these figures from the US Geological Society's website, representing data from a recent 47-year period:
Richter: Quakes per year
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8.5 - 8.9 = 0.3
8.0 - 8.4 = 1.1
7.5 - 7.9 = 3.1
7.0 - 7.4 = 15
6.5 - 6.9 = 56
6.0 - 6.4 = 210
