In 1989 an earthquake hit San Francisco, on the west coast of USA, killing around 200 people. Twelve years later an earthquake hit Gujarat, in India. This time it killed approximately 30,000 people.

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        In 1989 an earthquake hit San Francisco, on the west coast of USA, killing around 200 people. Twelve years later an earthquake hit Gujarat, in India. This time it killed approximately 30,000 people.        In this report I will be comparing the two earthquakes, giving reasons why the Gujarat earthquake was so much more deadly than the one in San Francisco.

        

        An earthquake is a movement or tremor in the earths crust. Earthquakes happen all the time, but some are so weak that they cannot be felt. We know when there is an earthquake by using a seismometer, which is an instrument used to measure the earthquakes vibrations. The San Francisco earthquake and the Gujarat earthquake were so powerful that the shaking of the ground caused the buildings to collapse and landslides to occur. Earthquakes are much more common in some places than others, for instance there is a long narrow belt of earthquake activity that goes down the Atlantic Ocean. Another follows the west coast of North and South of America and then goes all the way round the edge of the Pacific Ocean to New Zealand. Earthquakes occur when two plates suddenly jolt past each other, which produces shock waves called ‘Seismic Waves’ An Earthquakes focus is the point at where the waves started, an Earthquakes epicenter is the point directly above it on the Earths surface, an Earthquakes magnitude is the amount of energy it gives out and the Richter Scale is a scale of measuring the magnitude.

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        Tuesday 17 October 1989 an earthquake hit the Californian City of San Francisco.  At least 200 people were killed and 3,000 injured in this incident. It occurred at 5.04pm and ripped 10ft cracks in roads and a packed highway collapsed, crushing 253 motorists. Fires broke out across the city and rescue workers found it hard to free people from damaged buildings. More than a million homes were pulled down by the shake and over 13,000

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