Being on the California coast I always would here about the San Andreas fault line and the danger of an Earthquake at any time. But what really causes the shakes? It's when two plate boundaries undergo strain or deformation the longer the strain builds up the greater the chance of those fault lines losing grip of each other thus cause a ripple of shaking to spread through to area. My country is England and while it doesn't sit on a fault line it does have a seismicity of a moderate rate.
This map includes every earthquake since the 1980's due to, "the expansion of the nuclear power program in the UK led to increased activity in revaluating historical seismicity" (British Geological Survey). This should be taken into context because Britain has never had an earthquake reaching more than 6.5 on the Richter scale. The British government has taken steps to reinforce building with earthquake safe technology and to keep educating the public about what to do in case of an emergency. However, I must say this a pretty low agenda item on the British citizens' to-do list. Other pressing matters take president over this geological phenomenon.
Links:
British Geology Survey, "Seismicity and Earthquake Hazard in the UK." SEISMICITY AND EARTHQUAKE HAZARD IN THE UK. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Feb. 2016.
Keller, Edward A., and Robert H. Blodgett. Natural Hazards: Earth's Processes as Hazards, Disasters, and Catastrophes. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2006. Print.
It makes sense they do not spend a lot of time and energy in prevention when they perceive this hazard as low risk...as with the S Korea blog, I wonder if tsunamis will be a different issue for them or not.....we'll see next week!
ReplyDeleteI also have heard of the San Andreas fault life most of my life having grown up here in California. I was even chatting with my boyfriend about this class and the first thing he said was, “oh yeah we have the San Andres fault line” and then we talked about what that meant.
ReplyDeleteI am glad that even though your country does not have extremely large earthquakes that they still keep their public informed about how best to stay safe in a situation that can be harming. While reading your post, I just thought about how dangerous it would be for a person who moves from a location that does not have any earthquake knowledge and then find themselves in a location that has a large earthquake. It is good that people have are being made aware even if they are not at a high risk.