22 May 1960 – Chile
Magnitude 9.5
The world's most powerful earthquake left 4,485 people dead and injured and 2 million homeless after it struck southern Chile in 1960. The port of Puerto Saavedra was destroyed in the ensuing tsunami, which caused $550m worth of damage in Chile and killed a further 170 people as five-metre waves hit the coasts of Japan and the Philippines. A day later Volcán Puyehue in Chile's lake district spewed ash 6,000m into the air in an eruption that lasted for several weeks.
28 March 1964 – Prince William Sound, Alaska
Magnitude 9.2
The Gulf of Alaska was devastated by the Prince William Sound earthquake that caused landslides in Anchorage and raised parts of outlying islands by as much as 11 metres. The resulting tsunami reached heights of 67 metres as it swept into the shallow Valdez inlet and was responsible for most of the 128 deaths and $311m worth of damage. The massive water displacement was felt as far away as the Louisiana Gulf coast and registered on tidal gauges in Puerto Rico.
26 December 2004 – Off the west coast of northern Sumatra
Magnitude 9.1
The deadliest tsunami in history was felt in 14 countries across Asia and east Africa, triggered by a "megathrust" as the Indian tectonic plate was forced beneath the Burmese plate. Indonesia was the worst affected with an estimated 170,000 of the nearly 230,000 dead. With many of the victims' bodies missing, the eventual death toll took a month to establish. Some the world's poorest communities lost more than 60% of their fishing and industrial infrastructure.
4 November 1952 – Kamchatka
Magnitude 9
The volcanic Russian peninsula was near the epicentre of the quake, but it was the Hawaiian islands that took the brunt of the tsunami that caused a million dollars' worth of damage as waves scoured the coasts, ripping boats from their moorings and, in Honolulu harbour, lifting a cement barge before throwing it down on to a freighter. No deaths were recorded, unless you count the six cows lost by one unfortunate Oahu farmer, who was left cursing an event that had occurred more than 3,000 miles away.
13 August 1868 – Arica, Peru (now part of Chile)
Magnitude 9
Hawaii also felt the force of the tsunami created by this pacific basin earthquake, but here the destruction was just as heavy in South America with the city of Arequipa destroyed and 25,000 killed. The quake was felt as far away as La Paz in Bolivia. Four hours after the first shocks, waves as high as 16 metres inundated the coast and carried one US gunboat two miles inland to rest precariously on the edge of a 60m cliff.
26 January 1700 – North Pacific coast of America
Magnitude 9 (estimated)
The only North American account of one of the continent's largest earthquakes comes from the oral history of native Americans near Vancouver island which describes how the large community of Pachena bay was wiped out by a huge wave. Across the pacific, the quake was accurately recorded by Japanese observers of the large tsunami that struck Japan on 27 January 1700. The power of that inundation has been used by historians and seismologists to pinpoint the magnitude of the Vancouver quake.
27 February 2010 – off Bio-Bio, Chile
Magnitude 8.8
The region around Concepción has been recorded as a centre for seismic shocks since the 16th century, but few have been as devastating as the early morning quake that generated a Pacific-wide tsunami and cost the lives of 521 people. With a further 12,000 injured and more than 800,000 left homeless, Chile was left reeling at the scale of a disaster that would cost the nation $30bn by the end of 2010.
13 January 1906 – coast of Ecuador
Magnitude 8.8
Emanating from the ocean off Ecuador and Colombia, the quake generated a tsunami that killed between 500 and 1,500 people along a coastline from Central America to San Francisco. To the west in Hawaii, rivers suddenly drained about 12 hours after the first shocks, then were submerged as a series of successively larger waves flooded the coast.
1 November 1755 – Lisbon
Magnitude 8.7
The near-total destruction of Lisbon and the deaths of a quarter of the city's population were caused by an earthquake, followed by a tsunami and fire, that was felt in north Africa, France and northern Italy. In the age of enlightenment, the cultural impact of the quake spread even further afield as the horrors of Lisbon provided inspiration for sensationalist artworks and philosophical tracts. Voltaire penned a poem on the catastrophe and scientists found a wealth of written first-hand accounts to advance their understanding of the physical world.
15 August 1950 – Assam-Tibet
Magnitude 8.6
Seventy villages simply disappeared in the string of disasters generated by an earthquake with an epicentre in Tibetan Rima but which wrought most destruction in India's Assam state. Across the region, landslides claimed the lives of 1,526 people and rendered parts of the landscape unrecognisable from the air. The quake was followed by severe flooding, and eight days after the first tremors a natural dam on the Subansiri river burst, releasing a seven-metre wall of water against nearby villages. Near the epicentre of the quake, witnesses mentioned "explosive sounds" that seemed to come from high in the air, while seismologists as far away as England and Norway noted "oscillations" in lakes.
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