structures (Watkins, Bottino, and Morisawa 30-32).Earthquakes occur around us all the time. Most are too small to notice and cause little to no damage. However, every so often large earthquakes do occur. Large earthquakes leave catastrophic damage and have brought death tolls up to 850,000 (World Book Encyclopedia). The majority of death and destruction is the effect of the secondary shocks. Fires, landslides, tsunami, falling rock, damaged buildings, and damaged gas lines are just a few results of secondary shocks. These conditions reek havoc on earthquake corrupted areas, and in 1934, Bihar-Nepal witnessed this first hand. During a landslide, "…an observer reported that his car sank to the axles". In 1946 off the coast of the Aleutians, the base of a lighthouse ended up 45 feet below sea level after a tsunami wave over 100 feet crashed on shore (Watkins, Bottino, Morisawa 51, 53-54).An earthquake is a natural occurrence; a phenomena just like rain. They have occurred for billions of years and descriptions as old as recorded history shows their effects on people's lives. Long before scientific explanations mankind created folklore to explain them. We have come a long way for spinning yarns around the campfire, but there is still no way to prevent earthquakes. All in all it doesn't hurt to learn as much as one can, but just like taxes and pokemon earthquakes are something we have to live with....
