Seismic movements are among the most serious scourges that men have had to face in all stages of the human trajectory.
It is estimated that there have been about 7,000 earthquakes in human history, of which about 300, almost 5%, were strong enough to sometimes destroy entire cities and cause thousands of victims.
It is considered that 75% of tsunamis, a type of earthquake generated under the sea that is usually of great magnitude -more than 7 degrees on the Richter scale-. Then, large blocks of rock suddenly move vertically along a fracture in the deep ocean.
In that sense, the areas affected by this type of phenomenon is the Pacific, because there is the most active tectonic zone on the planet, the so-called “Ring of Fire”.
One of the most powerful in memory, that of Pompeii in the first century of our era, occurred in Shensi, in China, in 1556, which caused 800 thousand deaths.
The one in Messina (Italy) in 1908 and the one in Tokyo and Yokohama (Japan) in 1923, both already in the 20th century, exceeded one hundred thousand victims.
In our continent, without reaching these numbers of deaths, they caused numerous victims, two in the United States: the one in Charleston in 1886 and the one in San Francisco in 1906.
In 1960, Chile and 10 years later Peru, suffered violent earthquakes, also with thousands of deaths. In Chile it was repeated with fewer victims in 2010.
Without forgetting those of Nicaragua and Guatemala also in the 20th century in the 70s.
In our country, let us remember two important earthquakes with more than ten thousand victims in each case. In Mendoza in 1861 and San Juan in 1944.
In 1977 another one was also registered in San Juan, on November 23, in the city of Caucete, but with few victims because its epicenter was in a fundamentally rural area.
In mid-January 2010 the terrible earthquake in Haiti.
Haiti is the poorest country in the American continent. It had in its 27,000 square kilometers about nine million inhabitants.
Its capital is Port-au-Prince.
And a double fatality.
It is known that the epicenter of an earthquake is the point that corresponds to the place of the area of greatest seismic concentration, which is where the greatest impact occurs, naturally.
Well, the epicenter of this phenomenon in Haiti was only 15 km from Port-au-Prince, the country’s capital. And besides, it was not 100 or 200 km deep, as is often the case. It was only 10 km from the surface.
In addition, the constructions -almost all of wood- were not anti-seismic at all.
Hence the hundreds of thousands of victims.
In addition, Haiti practically lacked trees, because they had been cut down almost entirely.
Even its population did not have enough medical attention, food, water, not even an organized state that could alleviate that situation.
In another order of things, Haiti was the first black republic in the world in which practically illiterate slaves, for the most part, defeated Napoleon Bonaparte’s troops in 1803 and on January 1, 1804 declared their independence.
Man, with all the technical advances that he has achieved, cannot yet predict this natural phenomenon that is an earthquake.
And an example, with an anecdote that clearly tells us about the limitations of human beings compared to animals.
April 17, 1906 was a historic day for the city of San Francisco, in the USA. Because the famous Italian tenor Enrico Caruso, the number one of his time, sang that night at the opera house in that city .
Many of the spectators left the theater at midnight to have a drink and comment on the musical event.
Few, or perhaps no one, noticed that hundreds of thousands of birds mysteriously left their nests, disturbing the night serenity with their cries.
A few hours later, in the early hours of April 18, 1906, an earthquake devastated the city of San Francisco.
Thirty seconds was the duration of the first earthquake and 15 seconds that of a second earthquake, minutes later.
In a few hours, a city of 400,000 inhabitants was 80% destroyed. But perhaps I would not have covered this topic if it had not happened in March 2011 the terrible earthquake in Japan of 9 degrees on the Richter scale, the fifth earthquake for its power, of the last 100 years, with more than 100 aftershocks of which the majority exceeded 6 degrees.
To think that the little birds had caught a natural phenomenon in advance that men could not foresee.
A new ratification that in many areas, animals surpass us and that man believes he is superior to them, just because he has the ability to speak. But they have a language that never strays from reality.
And a final aphorism in relation to this assessment
“The language of nature only expresses truths.”
Source: Ambito
