Living with Earthquakes - Earthquake Engineering for Structural Design - page 45

in North America and the second largest ever recorded (after the Chile earthquake).
The rupture was about 800 km long, producing massive avalanches and landslides.
Important areas were uplifted by nearly 11.5 m and generated a devastating
tsunami, with a wave of 67 m measured at Valdez Inlet. However, this earthquake
caused only 115 deaths, 9 due to ground motions and 106 due to the tsunami, and
low monetary losses, considerably small for a quake of this size. This was
primarily due to the low population density and the type of houses, mainly made of
wood.
The 4 th most deadly earthquake of the world in the 20 th Century was the
undersea 1970 Peru Ancash earthquake (Wikipedia nd), with a magnitude of 8.1.
This earthquake was the result of the subduction of the Nazca tectonic plate under
the South American tectonic plate. Combined with a resultant landslide, it was the
worst catastrophic natural disaster ever recorded in the history of Peru. Many
coastal cities were significantly damaged, but the Andean valley, a steep valley
paralleling the coast, suffered the worst disaster. The ground motions destabilized
Interplate
subduction
fault
(a)
Figure 2.8 (continues)