Add this to the tremors that seriously damaged New Zealand (Feb. 2011) devastated Haiti (Jan. 2010) and caused the South East Asia Tsunami (Dec. 2004), along with massive others in Iran, South China and even Italy and in the 21st Century alone, earthquakes have been responsible for 680,000 deaths. It’s not unreasonable to be scared and here are the 7 worst places to live if you’re afraid of earthquakes
1. Japan
Japan is actually the country that records the most seismic activity but even so the recent earthquake was a major shock because they are also extremely well prepared and equipped. The main town destroyed (Miyagi) had a 10m wall which is scientifically proven to be effective against Tsunamis. Unfortunately, the tremendous shaking and tectonic movement actually made the earth drop more than 10m rendering the wall useless when the wave hit.
2. Indonesia
Another one of the worst places to live if you are scared of earthquakes has experienced a devastating disaster this century and that is Indonesia. Along an extremely active seismic zone, this is definitely a place to avoid because it has a long history of strong and damaging quakes.
3. Tonga
Somewhere you may not have heard of but certainly one of the worst places to live if you’re scared of earthquakes. It’s a sparsely populated area in the South Pacific but it’s also thought that many of the earthquakes here go unrecorded.
4. China
China is one of the three countries that has suffered the most number of the world’s strongest quakes including one of 8.8 magnitude in February, 2010 and one of 6.9 less than two months later.
5. Iran
Along with China, Iran is one of the worst places to live if you are scared of earthquakes because it too suffers a large number of high magnitude quakes. Mother Earth has no sense of occasion and the last catastrophic earthquake in Iran was on Christmas Day, 2003 which caused 28,000 fatalities.
6. Turkey
This is the last of the top three countries that suffers the most high magnitude quakes although in the 21st century so far they’ve enjoyed a fairly quiet period of seismic activity. The last major event was in 1999, measured 7.8 on the Richter Scale and caused over 17,000 casualties.
7. Anywhere on Earth
I hate to tell you this ladies, but there’s nowhere to hide. Anywhere in the world can be struck by an earthquake at any time. Obviously, there are specific earthquake zones – for example the whole of the Pacific Rim and particularly South East Asia – and this whole area can be classed as the worst place to live if you are scared of earthquakes.
Movements in the Earth’s crusts are as uncontrollable as but far less predictable than the weather. It’s one of the vagaries of life on this planet and all you can do is hope that your house doesn’t stand in one of the worst places to live if you’re scared of earthquakes.
And whilst on the subject, best wishes to those still suffering in Japan.