Living with Earthquakes - Earthquake Engineering for Structural Design - page 35

(b)
Figure 2.3 Earthquakes in the world on 27.12.2006: (a) Worldwide earthquakes;
(b) Asia region with strong Taiwan earthquake (M 7.1) (USGS, nd)
The number of worldwide damaging earthquakes from 1990 to 2009 is
presented in Table 2.2. One can see that this number does not vary very much,
showing some constancy in the annual earthquake number, ranging from 1100 to
1900. Contrary, the number of estimated deaths varies very much if the
earthquakes occur or not in urbanized zones containing many non-engineered
buildings or producing secondary effects, like tsunamis (e.g. the 2004 Sumatra
earthquake).
2.2HISTORICAL EARTHQUAKES
The historical earthquakes, in the period until 1900, which produced an important
number of fatalities and/or a very high magnitude, are presented in Table 2.3. One
can see that, even if the density of population in seismic areas was small, the
number of deaths was in some cases very high.
The 226 BC Rhodes earthquake destroyed one of the most important sculptures
of Antiquity, the Colossus (Wikipedia, nd).
The 1349 Rome earthquake caused the collapse of the outer South side wall of
the Roman Colosseum (Wikipedia, nd).
The World's deadliest earthquake seems to be the 1556 China-Shaanxsi
earthquake in central China (Wikipedia, nd). It struck a region where most people
lived in caves carved from soft rock. These dwellings collapsed during the
earthquake, killing an estimated 830,000 people.