SS Connection

Earthquakes in history have not directly killed people. The main cause of death in earthquakes is building collapses and events earthquakes cause like fires, tsunamis, and landslides. The most common of these is building damage, because when buildings fall, they crush people and they die. This is not common anymore in more developed areas. In modern times, most earthquakes have not killed as many people. This is because in developed countries, they have been able to develop methods of building to reduce the risk of buildings falling. In less developed countries, they don't have this advantage, so there is still a high death rate and a lot of damage. The more concentrated the population and the poorer the country, the more risk there is of a high mortality rate from an earthquake in that area.

Earthquake codes in different areas have also helped with keeping the buildings from collapsing. These are important, because it is cheaper and easier to build if it is not to earthquake codes. They were put in place to keep contractors and builders from doing things the cheap way and it resulting in unnecessary deaths. In places where there are no earthquake codes, the contractors and builders go the cheap way and build to the codes they have, but they wont go any father in most cases. Most of the time that's fine, but sometimes the codes aren't up to par for an earthquake that happens, because they aren't common in the area. Poor countries also can't afford to build to earthquake codes. This is a problem when they have earthquakes, because they have high casualties.

This image shows the death of horses after a wall fell on them in the San Francisco earthquake. This type of event occurred a lot in early earthquakes and still does in earthquakes in developing countries. This type of event also occurs with people involved. This picture and events similar are why we now have earthquake codes in place in areas that are prone to them and especially ones that are strong. The event in the picture also happened and still happens to people during earthquakes.

As earthquake codes in the United States and other developed countries have improved, the countries have helped to make buildings safer after earthquakes in other countries that are poorer. The developed countries have the resources to put these in place and through history have had less deaths in their earthquakes as they have developed earthquake codes. As places have earthquakes that are higher magnitudes, the countries change the codes to withstand the more violent shaking.

Places that have more concentrated amounts of peopl are places that see higher injury or death tolls. If you have more people all in one building that is damaged or that collapses, then you will have more of them hurt or dead. This is why there are a lot of taller buildings that are being made earthquake resistant compared to the number of houses and smaller buildings. Contractors want to protect buildings with more people more than the ones with less people. There are codes for both models though.