‘Natural Disasters’ Archives
Pacific Tsunami Warning System
Pacific Tsunami Warning System (PTWS) The rim of the Pacific Ocean is by far the most seismically and volcanically active zone on Earth. It is called the “Ring of Fire” because of the huge number of volcanoes and earthquakes. This activity has also made it more prone to tsunamis than anywhere else on Earth. Over the millennia, residents of [...]
Fault
Fault A break in Earth’s crust along which displacement of rock occurs. Perhaps the world’s most famous fault is the San Andreas Fault, which lies along California’s Pacific coast for several hundred miles and is responsible for the earthquake that destroyed much of San Francisco and neighboring communities in 1906. faults are abundant in [...]
Death Toll
Death Toll There are horrifying death tolls reported for most of the earthquakes and volcanoes in this book. When the numbers are low, the death toll can be considered relatively accurate. Large events may not be so accurate because multiple sources must be tallied, and there is a lot of room for error. In the distant past, no one had time [...]
Los Angeles , California, Earthquakes
Los Angeles , California, Earthquakes The Los Angeles area has been the location of numerous earthquakes, some of which in historical times have been powerful and destructive. One of the first earthquakes experienced by European-descended Americans in this part of California occurred during a visit by Captain Gaspar de Portola, governor of [...]
Major Earthquake
Major Earthquake An earthquake with a magnitude greater than 7 on the Richter scale. Major earthquakes are typically restricted to the tectonically active areas of Earth. In the United States, California and Alaska commonly experience major earthquakes, and yet throughout the entire rest of the country, they are so rare that historical ones can [...]
Natural Disaster in America
Natural Disaster in America Two contradictory trends affected the impact of natural disasters on the United States in the second half of the twentieth century. On the one hand, thanks to advances in science and technology the ability to predict and prepare for natural disasters has greatly increased. On the other hand, more and more Americans [...]
Cyclones of Africa
Cyclones of Africa In the summer in southern Africa there is a threat of violent tropical storms. These are cyclones, also often called hurricanes or typhoons. They develop winds of more than 80 miles per hour and can generate tall ocean swells that become storm surges when they break across a coastline. These surges can be very destructive, [...]
Catastrophism
Catastrophism One of ‘‘two antagonist doctrines of geology’’ identified by William Whewell’s History of the Inductive Sciences (1837), its antithesis being uniformitarianism. Whewell sought to distinguish theories of the Earth’s history that imagined it to have been shaped primarily by sudden catastrophic events—floods, [...]
Eco Catastrophe
Eco Catastrophe A term popularised by Paul Ehrlich, who used it in 1969 as the title of a futurological narrative summarising the anxieties about the threat of *population explosion and its corollary problems of resource management and environmental *pollution, as previously expressed in The Population Bomb (1968). Alvin Toffler’s Ecospasm [...]
Toba Supervolcano
Toba Supervolcano Toba is the greatest eruption known since humans evolved. It occurred about 73 500 3500 BP on Sumatra, when an estimated 2800km3 was erupted in a VEI 8 eruption, with eruption clouds up to 32,5 km, to create the 100 40 km caldera known today as Toba. The eruption caused air fall 10 cm thick up to 2000km away, and [...]
