More than any other U.S. city, San Francisco is known for major earthquakes, most famously the 1906 quake that caused a fire that destroyed much of the city. Later research into the earthquake led to the discovery of the
San Andreas Fault. Frisco remains at
high risk for a big one: Between now and 2032, there's a 62 percent chance of a quake stronger than 6.6 on the Richter scale.
Situated on the North Anatolian fault line—one of the most active in the world—Istanbul has been on earthquake watch for years and is what The Guardian once
called “a disaster waiting to happen.” With 15 million residents and 1.6 million buildings, Istanbul is a difficult city to prepare for this kind of disaster, but recently officials have tightened regulations on buildings, and the World Bank has donated millions to aid in preparatory measures. Studies by the U.S. Geological Survey found as much as a 70 percent chance of a major earthquake in the city within the next three decades.
The Great Kanto Quake that rocked Tokyo in 1923 still ranks as one of the world’s worst disasters of the 20th century. Fires spread across the city and took two days to extinguish because the quake had ruptured water lines. Scientists think there’s a 70 percent chance that in the coming decades another big earthquake will wreak havoc the capital of Japan—the most quake-prone country in the world.
AP Photo
Scientists
estimate that a major earthquake could kill as many as a million people in Tehran, making it one of the most vulnerable cities to an earthquake in the world. Home to 8.5 million inhabitants and an unstable government, the metropolis lies on at least a hundred different fault lines, such a dangerous location that some have
argued that Iran should pack up and move its entire capital city to a safer spot.
Los Angeles also contains nearly 100 faults, and is one of the major cities along the San Andreas Fault Zone, which moves two inches per year. The most recent significant earthquake in L.A.'s history occurred in 1994, was 6.7 in magnitude, and was “
the costliest U.S. earthquake since 1906.” The city is expected to experience at least one earthquake a year of magnitude 5.0 or greater, scientists say.
A
recent study found that Manila is at greater risk for an earthquake than was previously thought, and last year, a U.N. official made his concern apparent. "You're gonna have 16,000 buildings destroyed. You're gonna have…150,000 who are injured,” the head of the U.N.'s Emergency Services Branch
told the BBC, predicting an imminent quake of between 7.0 and 8.0 magnitude in this city of 18 million. A colleague echoed his concern.“The big earthquake is certainly coming. The question is when? No one can tell. It can happen today, tomorrow, or next year. But certainly there will be an earthquake.”
Haiti's recent earthquake drew many
comparisons to the one that struck Mexico City in 1985. The massive metropolitan area is home to over 21 million people, and the city itself was built on a dried-up lake bed, making the ground underneath like "a huge bowl of gelatin," according to one researcher. Ominously, on the Earthquake Disaster Risk Index, Mexico City sits just higher than Santiago, Chile.
Geohazards International conducted an
exhaustive study of what would happen to Ecuador's capital city in the days and weeks following a major earthquake. It predicted severe structural damage due to the "vulnerable adobe" buildings, landslides that bury people and render roads impassable, a breakdown of the city's water supply, sewage flooding the streets, and thousands of homeless people dying of exposure in the first night after the quake. "Human casualties would be substantial," the hypothetical scenario states.
The Alaska Seismic Hazards Safety Commission says the 49th state is one of the most earthquake-prone areas in the world, and its largest city gets hit by a moderate tremor most years. The last one to do major damage was on Good Friday in 1964, and, at 9.2 on the Richter scale, it remains the
strongest to afflict North America to date. Since then, Alaska's population has more than doubled, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency
estimates that "with the present infrastructure and policies, Alaska will have the second highest... earthquake-loss ratio in the country."
This Nepalese city is especially
vulnerable thanks to its haphazardly constructed homes built with reinforced concrete and filled in with masonry. Experts have
warned for years about Kathmandu’s lack of earthquake preparation, the danger intensified by its dense population. The last major quake happened in 1934, when nearly 17,000 city residents died in a minute.
Last April, a 6.3-magnitude quake shook L’Aquila and its surrounding villages, killing 295. It was the strongest to hit Italy in three decades, but L'Aquila has a long history of seismic activity going back nearly a millennium. Because of this, and the fact that L’Aquila sits on a large ancient lake bed that amplifies the shocks, it's considered one of the most reliable earthquake hot spots in the world.
Maui experiences an almost constant stream of tremors. Last year, a 3.5-magnitude quake hit, and a year earlier, one registered 3.1. The island suffered more than $100 million in damages after a 6.7-magnitude shock originated on the Big Island in 2006. And in a 1938 a quake of similar size caused oil tankers to spill 30,000 gallons of oil into the sea.
AP Photo
Kazakhstan's commercial capital was almost destroyed by a 7.3-magnitude quake in 1887, and again in 1911. The city is put at even more risk from earthquakes because of the mudslides they trigger.
Experts expect a major quake to occur in the next decade, and say such an event would render 40 percent of the city homeless and kill at least 5 percent of the population.
New Delhi was shaken by 4.3-magnitude shock in late 2007. The city lies south of the fault line that rims the northern border of India and often feels tremors from quakes nearby. Like many other developing nations, the real risk comes from the city’s shaky infrastructure and soft soil, which can
amplify ground motion. The last major quake, measuring 6.5, occurred in 1720 and caused major damage.
Each year,
many people
die in Cairo’s collapsing buildings—not because the ground is shaking, but because the structures are so rickety. Which means it doesn't take much of an earthquake to level buildings in this city. A 5.0-magnitude shock in 1992 claimed the lives of 552 people, and angry mobs
took to the streets when Egypt’s bureaucracy didn’t launch search and rescue operations fast enough.
After the earthquake that killed 86,000 in Pakistan in 2005, the world learned of the danger of quake-prone regions that also happen to have freezing cold winters. "Hundreds of cases of pneumonia are already being reported at higher altitudes in the foothills of the Hindu Kush mountains," reported a nonprofit team after that disaster. Pakistan, like many South-Asian nations, lacks the planning and resources necessary to deal with the hundreds of thousands of people left homeless by an earthquake.
AP Photo
The West Coast of South America endures more than two-thirds of the world’s major quakes. Earthquakes in Peru have been
documented since 1553; a shock killed 30 in 1582, then 5,000 were killed in Lima in 1746, and 1,400 died in 1946. An 8.1-magnitude quake struck 50 miles southwest of Lima in 1974, devastating the city. And before a large quake hit along Peru’s coast four years earlier, killing more than 70,000, the country had no earthquake building
codes at all.
Indonesia sits on the Ring of Fire, an area of seismic activity that curves through the Pacific, making earthquakes common in the island nation. That, combined with Jakarta’s population of 8.7 million and shoddily built buildings, makes the city vulnerable. A quarter of the buildings in nearby Padang
collapsed in the 7.6-magnitude quake that hit last fall.
China's third-largest city is home to 9 million and lies in the Zhangjiakou-Penglai seismotectonic zone. Tianjin experienced a horrific earthquake in 1976, but since then the city has boomed. Troublingly, however, the rapid population growth of recent years has led to high-rise buildings being constructed on unstable "
soft sites" of man-filled land, leaving it particularly exposed to major structural damage.
One only need look at the
high premiums for earthquake insurance in this shaky Japanese city to get a sense of its vulnerability. Ironically, Osaka owes its prominence to a sudden influx of new residents driven there in the 1930s by another city's earthquake further north. In 1995 a quake destroyed much of nearby Kobe, highlighting concerns about the multiple nuclear power plants in the area.
Earthquakes hit Bangladesh with relative frequency, and 95 percent of them have their epicenters within 600 kilometers of the capital, Dhaka. The Earthquake Disaster Risk Index puts Dhaka at the
top of the list of the world's seismically riskiest cities. But the biggest problem,
according to the city's daily newspaper, "is that the people's preparedness and awareness to face a fatal earthquake seem to be almost zero."
A major disaster in Bogota could rock Colombia's fragile political climate as well, as the capital city sits atop what the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction calls "a complex seismic zone." A 1996 study warned that "an earthquake that originates along the base of the country's Cordillera Oriental (Eastern mountain range) could cause the destruction of 10 percent of the city's buildings, 3,500 to 4,500 deaths, [and] 20,000 to 26,000 injuries."
The Bolivian capital lies along the same tectonic danger zone as Santiago, and is one of six cities identified as high-risk by the South American Capital Cities Seismic Risk Reduction Project. Paradoxically, because La Paz experiences fewer earthquakes than the other five, it is one of the least-prepared municipalities to deal with such an event, making it one of the most dangerous. "The population is not prepared to withstand, much less confront, a destroying earthquake," concluded a 1999 study.
Most of Pakistan
lies on fault lines, and though the
northern part of the country is in the most danger, Karachi could still suffer significant damage if a quake struck nearby. The city, one of the largest in the world with more than 15 million people, felt a 4.6-magnitude aftershock after a major quake in Kashmir five years ago.
Like most major cities on America's West Coast, Seattle regularly experiences earthquakes, and a quake in 2001
hit 6.8 on the Richter scale. The city and surrounding areas are situated on the
Seattle Fault, which runs throughout much of Western Washington, though its exact location is not precisely defined.
