A deadly earthquake is not defined only by magnitude. Death tolls rise when strong shaking hits dense cities, weak buildings, coastal areas exposed to tsunamis…
An earthquake estimated at magnitude 7.9 ruptured the San Andreas Fault; the fires that followed destroyed far more of the city than the shaking. Officials reported abou…
The largest earthquake ever instrumentally recorded, at magnitude 9.5 per USGS, ruptured about 800 km of fault and sent a tsunami across the Pacific, killing an estimate…
At magnitude 9.2, the second-largest earthquake ever recorded shook Alaska for 4.5 minutes, killing about 131 people through tsunamis and landslides more than shaking it…
A shallow earthquake, roughly magnitude 7.6-8.0, hit the industrial city of Tangshan at 3:42am while nearly a million residents slept in unreinforced buildings. China's…
A magnitude 9.1-9.3 undersea earthquake displaced roughly 1,300 km of seafloor, sending tsunami waves across the Indian Ocean. An estimated 227,900 people were killed or…
A shallow magnitude-7.0 earthquake struck near Haiti's densely built capital. USGS-cited surveys put the toll near 158,679; other estimates range from about 100,000 to o…
A magnitude 9.0-9.1 megathrust quake -- the largest ever recorded in Japan -- generated a tsunami that overwhelmed sea defenses and flooded the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear…
A magnitude-7.8 earthquake near Kathmandu killed more than 9,000 people, destroyed over 500,000 homes, and triggered a deadly avalanche on Mount Everest.
Twin quakes of magnitude 7.8 and 7.5, nine hours apart, devastated southern Turkey and northern Syria, killing more than 55,000 people combined and exposing building-cod…
A magnitude-7.2 foreshock and magnitude-7.5 mainshock struck near Yumare, collapsing an estimated 80% of buildings in La Guaira state. The death toll passed 6,500 by Aug…
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