Sunday, February 28, 2010

Friday, February 26, 2010

Molise Earthquake

The Molise Earthquake that devastated many in the Italian regions of Molise and Puglia happened on 31 October 2002, 10:32:58 (UTC).

Geologists hypothesized that the major component on the relative motion between the African and Eurasian plate is accommodated on a NS, left-lateral booundary that is near the location where the where the earthquake is associated with the greatest damage.This is why the fault should be a NS, left-lateral fault and not a EW, right-lateral fault.

The Molise Earthquake was a magnitude 5.9 earthquakewith a depth of 10.0km (6.2 miles).

Many victims of the earthquake suffered much when a school collapsed. This school is in a town of San Giuliano di Puglia. It is devastating to hear that out of 51 people in school, only 25 lucky ones survived. To trully understand how many were dead in the falling of the school, a class of 9 boys were all dead and none survived. This is how tragic it is.

If more people took up earthquake engineering to study the behaviour of buildings and structures, the damaged might be minimizedas there might be more high-technology products to predict when an earthquake might strike more accurately.

Written by Shing Leng