It started with the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti in January. Since then, it seems every few days we receive news of yet another strong quake somewhere else in the world: Japan, Chile, Indonesia and just this past weekend, Turkey. Some have latched on to these stories as evidence that the end of the world is near. So, what’s the deal with all the quakes? Is something out of the ordinary happening?

The answer is no. There is in fact no increase in earthquakes this year, there’s only more media coverage around it.

• The United States Geological Survey (USGS), which is responsible for monitoring, reporting, and researching earthquakes and earthquake hazards, reports about 30,000 earth quakes a year, and over 50 per day.
• There are some quakes that are so small that they are not felt. The USGS estimates that millions of these happen every year.

So if there’s nothing uncommon going on, why the increase in concern or awareness?

• The 7.0 quake in Haiti was devastating because the country was not prepared for such a disaster – i.e. buildings and the overall infrastructure of the country were not built to withstand such a tremor, resulting in the death of 200,000+ people. And, as we’ve learned destruction means ratings so media outlets were all over the story.
• The earthquake in Chile was much more powerful but the country was prepared- Chile has some of the strictest building codes in South America.

Why is it easy for people to believe that there have been more earthquakes over the past few years?

• In the past twenty years or so, there’s been a tremendous increase in the number of seismograph stations around the world.
• Improvement in global communications means that earthquakes are becoming world news as opposed to just local news. Only decades ago, if thousands of people were killed by an earthquake in Indonesia, for example, the media in the rest of the world would not know about it until days or weeks after the fact, long after such an event would be deemed “newsworthy”. So by the time this information was available, it would probably be relegated to the back pages of the newspaper, if at all. We are now getting this information almost immediately.
• While the number of large earthquakes in fairly constant, the population density in earthquake-prone areas is increasing. In many countries where this is happening, the construction needed to house these new residents is often not earthquake resistant. As a result, there are greater casualties from large earthquakes than in the past.

So, the fact is that there have not been a statistically unusual number of quakes. There’s only been an unusual amount of media attention around quakes that have caused a lot of devastation. Add to that the increased interest in the environment and natural disasters, the public now learns about more earthquakes.

What can you do?

Learn more about earthquakes and other natural disasters and share this knowledge with your friends and family.

Source: USGS