Station 1 - 1989 San Francisco Earthquake

Station 1 - 1989 San Francisco Earthquake

On October 17, 1989, a magnitude 6.9 earthquake hit the San Francisco Bay Area, killing 67 people and causing more than $5 billion in damages. Despite the fact that the disaster was one of the most powerful and destructive quakes ever to hit a populated area of the United States, the death toll was relatively small. Sixty-seven people perished as a result of the quake, which lasted around 15 seconds, while more than 3,000 others were injured.

This earthquake happened on a transform boundary at a depth of 12 miles. Since the plates on either side of a transform boundary are merely sliding past each other and not tearing or crunching each other, transform boundaries lack the spectacular features found at convergent and divergent boundaries. Instead, their sliding motion causes lots of earthquakes. The result of two massive plates pushing against one another is that massive amounts of energy build up. Occasionally this energy is released suddenly in the form of large earthquakes.

Station 2 - 1960 Chile Earthquake

Station 2 - 1960 Chile Earthquake

The 1960 Valdivia earthquake or Great Chilean earthquake of Sunday, 22 May 1960 was the most powerful earthquake ever recorded, rating a 9.5 on the moment magnitude scale and located a depth of 21 miles. It occurred in the afternoon and lasted approximately 10 minutes. The resulting tsunami affected southern Chile, Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines, eastern New Zealand, southeast Australia and the Aleutian Islands.

The earthquake was a megathrust earthquake resulting from the release of mechanical stress between the subducting Nazca Plate and the South American Plate, on the Peru–Chile Trench. Subduction zones are known to produce the strongest earthquakes on earth, as their particular structure allows more stress to build up before energy is released. All that folding and bending makes rock in both plates break and slip, causing earthquakes.

Station 3 - 1964 Alaska Earthquake

Station 4 - 1964 Alaska Earthquake

On. March 28, 1964, a fault between the Pacific and North American plates ruptured near College Fjord in Prince William Sound causing the 2nd most powerful earthquake ever recorded of 9.2 magnitude. The focus occurred at a depth of approximately 16 miles. Ocean floor shifts created large tsunamis (up to 220 feet (67 m) in height), which resulted in many of the deaths and much of the property damage. Large rockslides were also caused, resulting in great property damage. Vertical displacement of up to 38 feet (11.5 m) occurred, affecting an area of 100,000 miles² (250,000 km²) within Alaska.

The Alaska earthquake was a subduction zone earthquake (megathrust earthquake), caused by an oceanic plate sinking under a continental plate. The fault responsible was the Aleutian Megathrust, a reverse fault caused by a compressional force. This caused much of the uneven ground which is the result of ground shifted to the opposite elevation.

Station 4 - 1812 New Madrid earthquake

Station 4 - New Madrid Earthquake

On December 16, 1811, residents of the frontier town of New Madrid, in what is now Missouri, were jolted from their beds by a violent earthquake with a magnitude of 7.5.. The ground heaved and pitched, hurling furniture, snapping trees and destroying barns and homesteads. The shaking rang church bells in Charleston, South Carolina, and toppled chimneys as far as Cincinnati, Ohio. Although it is not completely known the inferred depth of the earthquake is somewhere between 3 and 8 miles.

Most earthquakes occur at the edges of the earth’s 15 major tectonic plates; when they slide against each other, the ground gets a jolt. But New Madrid sits in the middle of a plate. Its seismic history—and the magnitude 5.8 Virginia quake that shook the East Coast earlier this year—is a reminder that earthquakes can strike in surprising places. The New Madrid Seismic Zone (NMSZ) is made up of reactivated faults that formed when what is now North America began to split or rift apart during the breakup of the supercontinent Rodinia in the Neoproterozoic Era (about 750 million years ago).

Station 5 - 2008 Iceland earthquake

Station 5 - 2008 Iceland earthquake

The 2008 Iceland earthquake was a doublet earthquake that struck on May 29 in southwestern Iceland. The recorded magnitudes of the two main quakes were 5.9 and 5.8, respectively, giving a composite magnitude of 6.1. The earthquake occured at a relatively shallow depth of 6.2 miles. There were no human fatalities, but 30 injuries were reported and a number of sheep were killed.The epicenter of the earthquake was between the towns of Hveragerði and Selfoss, about 45 kilometers (28 mi) east-southeast of the capital, Reykjavík.

Iceland straddles the mid-Atlantic ridge where the Eurasian and North-American tectonic plates move away from each other. Volcanic activity is common along such divergent boundaries but strong earthquakes are rare.