Reply to I am a earthquake seismologist. AMA. 5th anniversary of Louisa Quake

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Could the high death toll in Amatrice have been avoided today?[/quote]

Possibly. [b] 6.2 is not that big;[/b] earthquake resistant building, for example, would help.   I have not really looked at anything related to that earthquake (I had medical tests the AM, and just finished that up).

A good way to look at this is to go to 2010.  Two earthquakes, a 7.1 in Haiti, and an 8.8 in Chile occurred 6 weeks apart.  The Chilean event was about 100x bigger than the Haiti earthquake, but had very few casualties.  Why?  Building codes.  By comparison, the smaller Haitian earthquake hit in a poor city with no building codes; possibly over 200,000 people were killed.  Building codes and code enforcement matter.

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At least 75 people have died and entire towns have been leveled. How can you say 6.2 is not "big" in relation to the structures the quake is hitting. It may not be "big" compared to an 8.2, but a 6.2 can cause massive damage and kill people.[/quote]

Amatrice is a very, very old city and has foundations and construction that reflect that. It was not designed or built to withstand a quake. Myanmar is a poor third world country and that's being generous. It was als not built to withstand an earthquake. Relatively speaking a 6.2 is not big. If it hit a big city, there would be some damage. But nothing catastrophic [/quote]

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