911 Earthquake

911 Earthquake

One of the most devastating crisis that’s been occurring since the start of time is the problem of Natural Disasters. Natural disasters are always difficult to predict and can happen without single warning. These disasters can greatly affect the human activity and the more serious ones can cause severe damage towards a country’s social economical and environmental factors. There are several lethal disasters that occur of earth, these include: Volcanic eruptions, Landslide, Cyclones, Tsunami and many others. One of the more deadly and unpredictable disaster is the Earthquake. Due to Earthquake’s distinctive occurrence, it is hard to predict when an earthquake will occur, even with the latest high tech equipment such as the seismograph. One of the more well known and devastating earthquake was the 921 Earthquake (also known as “Chi Chi” Earthquake) which occurred in Taiwan, 21st of September, 1999. The 921 Earthquake had occurred with very little warning and had shocked thousands of people from their sleep. This Earthquake has greatly impacted on Taiwan’s Social, and economical factor (see Fig.1).

Earthquake occurs when two tectonic plates on a fault line begins to cause friction as they slowly move past each other. This is slowly generated into a stored energy within the boundary. As the stress of the boundary begins to build up, the energy will soon become unable to store. The energy will then be released in a combination of radiated elastic strain seismic wave causing the earthquake (see Fig.2). The 921 Earthquake occurred in the Chelung-pu fault line. This fault is situated in the western part of the island and stretches through the foothills of Central Mountain in Nantou and Taichung. What had occurred was the hanging wall thrust westward and upward along a line, almost 60 miles long, with uplift ranging from more then 3 feet in the south to 20 feet in the north. Some parts of the fault were raised up to 7 meters, causing devastating destruction...