Sichuan earthquake, China Flashcards
How many people died during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake and those injured?
- 90,000 deaths
- 375,000 injuries
What was the magnitude of the Sichuan earthquake and how far down did it strike?
- 7.9Mw
- occurred 19km below the surface
What caused the Sichuan earthquake to happen?
- collision of Indo-Australian plate & Eurasian plate brought together the Tibet Plateau and Sichuan Basin
- stresses along the thrust fault caused tremors along the northwest margin of the Sichuan Basin
What are the differences between vulnerability and exposure?
- exposure is the population number and how prone and area is to earthquake hazards
- vulnerability is their ability to cope with the hazard
What is Sichuan’s exposure to earthquakes like?
- tectonically active (major earthquakes in the past)
- 15 million living close to the epicenter
- 4 million in regional capital Chengdu
What is vulnerability in terms of hazards?
- preparedness and human response to hazards
- higher risk means society is more inadequately prepared
Why was Sichuan so vulnerable to earthquakes?
-poor design & shoddy construction of many buildings
What buildings were most vulnerable in Sichuan?
- those the pre-dated the 1976 earthquake building code
- lacked steel reinforcement
- had inadequate construction materials (inferior concrete)
How can the Sichuan earthquake be regarded as a man-made disaster?
-to save money builders failed to use appropriate amount of steel
laxness of building regulations
-substandard building work
-corruption
-lack of enforcement of building regulations
What construction happened immediately after the earthquake and what did this further lead to?
- £800 million to strength 2,600 schools still standing
- country wide examination of the safety of schools
What was the cost of the Sichuan earthquake and how much does it exceed the Kobe earthquake in 1995?
- US$150 billion
- exceeds Kobe earthquake by US$30 billion
What is to be build after the Sichuan earthquake?
- 169 hospitals
- 4500 primary schools
- 3 million new homes for rural families
- 860,000 city apartments
What caused local authorities to force evacuation of people downstream to higher ground and how many were there?
- authorities evacuated 250,000
- rising water levels on largest barrier lake (Tanigiashan Lake on Juin River) threatened to breach earth dam
How much worldwide donation did Sichuan receive and how many volunteers came and helped?
- worldwide donations of US$456.9 million
- 100,000+ volunteers & NGOs from across China
How efficient was the Chinese governments response and what did this help with?
- Chinese government acted quickly
- helped them receive foreign support
How many were pushed into poverty and how were they helped?
- 1.4 million were pushed into poverty
- helped by the expansion of welfare programmes
Where about was the epicenter of the earthquake?
-epicenter = 80km northwest of the capital of Sichuan, Chengdu
When did the earthquake occur?
-occurred on May 12th, 2008 at 14:28 (Chinese Standard Time)
How far away was the earthquake felt?
-felt as far away as Beijing and Shanghai (1560km and 1700km away)
How many buildings were destroyed and damaged during the earthquake and resulted in how many homeless people?
- 5.4 million buildings collapsed
- further 21 million were damaged
- resulted in 4.8 million homeless
How many classrooms were destroyed and how many did this end up killing?
- 7,000 classrooms collapsed
- killing 10,000 students
What was the initial response to this disaster?
- re-homing victims
- search & rescue carried out
What were the main causes of flooding?
- 2500 dams sustaining damage
- quake lakes from landslide dams resulted in severe flooding to nearby cities and farmland
How much important infrastructure was damaged?
- 48,000km of water pipelines damaged
- 53,000km of roads damaged
