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by NZ_Matt
4049 days ago
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The richter scale in general is not a good indicator of the destructiveness of an earthquake. You need to consider the location of the epicenter and the depth of the quake before coming to any sort of conclusion. I experienced this first hand here in Christchurch, NZ. We had a 7.1M quake and then a 6.3M aftershock 6 months later. Despite being almost an entire magnitude smaller the 6.3M aftershock was 10x more destructive. This was primarily because the epicenter of the 6.3M quake was 40km closer to the city and some unusually high verticle accelerations caused by the strike slip motion of the fault and the local geography. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Canterbury_earthquake http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Christchurch_earthquake The Mercalli Intensity Scale was developed to give a better indicator of the actual effect to people on the ground. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercalli_intensity_scale |
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