The 1918 Shantou earthquake occurred in

Shantou Shantou, alternately romanized as Swatow and sometimes known as Santow, is a prefecture-level city on the eastern coast of Guangdong, China, with a total population of 5,502,031 as of the 2020 census (5,391,028 in 2010) and an administrative ...

Guangdong Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020) ...

Republic of China Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northeast ...

. Serious damage and high casualty numbers were reported in Guangdong and the surrounding provinces. It also caused some damage in what was then

British Hong Kong Hong Kong was a colony and later a dependent territory of the British Empire from 1841 to 1997, apart from a period of occupation under the Japanese Empire from 1941 to 1945 during the Pacific War. The colonial period began with the Briti ...

Earthquake

The event was a large

intraplate earthquake The term intraplate earthquake refers to a variety of earthquake that occurs ''within the interior'' of a tectonic plate; this stands in contrast to an interplate earthquake, which occurs ''at the boundary'' of a tectonic plate. Intraplate earth ...

occurring within the

Eurasian Plate The Eurasian Plate is a tectonic plate that includes most of the continent of Eurasia (a landmass consisting of the traditional continents of Europe and Asia), with the notable exceptions of the Indian subcontinent, the Arabian subcontinent and ...

, at the margin of the

South China Sea The South China Sea is a marginal sea of the Western Pacific Ocean. It is bounded in the north by the shores of South China (hence the name), in the west by the Indochinese Peninsula, in the east by the islands of Taiwan and northwestern Phil ...

. It displayed a strike-slip

focal mechanism The focal mechanism of an earthquake describes the deformation in the source region that generates the seismic waves. In the case of a fault-related event it refers to the orientation of the fault plane that slipped and the slip vector and is ...

. This location hosts a rift zone, and was previously the site of

subduction Subduction is a geological process in which the oceanic lithosphere is recycled into the Earth's mantle at convergent boundaries. Where the oceanic lithosphere of a tectonic plate converges with the less dense lithosphere of a second plate, the ...

and

collision In physics, a collision is any event in which two or more bodies exert forces on each other in a relatively short time. Although the most common use of the word ''collision'' refers to incidents in which two or more objects collide with great fo ...

during the

Mesozoic The Mesozoic Era ( ), also called the Age of Reptiles, the Age of Conifers, and colloquially as the Age of the Dinosaurs is the second-to-last era of Earth's geological history, lasting from about , comprising the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceo ...

. During the

Cenozoic The Cenozoic ( ; ) is Earth's current geological era, representing the last 66million years of Earth's history. It is characterised by the dominance of mammals, birds and flowering plants, a cooling and drying climate, and the current configura ...

extensional tectonics Extensional tectonics is concerned with the structures formed by, and the tectonic processes associated with, the stretching of a planetary body's crust or lithosphere. Deformation styles The types of structure and the geometries formed depend on ...

occurred. At least 14 earthquakes greater than magnitude 6.0 have been recorded historically. Offshore is the Littoral Fault Zone, a NE–ENE trending fault zone which runs parallel to the coast. Another fault, the Huanggangshui Fault, intersects the Littoral Fault Zone in a NE direction. In 1600, another magnitude 7.0 earthquake occurred in the same location as the 1918 event.

Damage

The earthquake occurred on February 13, 1918, at 14:07 in the afternoon. The epicenter location is believed to be centered off

Nan'ao Island Nan'ao or Nanao (), formerly romanized Namoa, is an island and county of the prefecture-level city of Shantou in Guangdong Province, China. The county spans a land area of , and sea area of . As of 2019, the county had a permanent population ...

or about 300 km northeast of the territory of Hong Kong, where the quake caused only minor damage and cracks to buildings in the territory.The Standard HK.
The Standard.com
." ''Article.'' Retrieved on 2008-12-16. Nearer to the epicenter area, the earthquake had a maximum Modified Mercalli intensity of X (''Extreme''). The eight provinces that were affected by the earthquake were Fujian, Guangdong, Hunan, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Anhui, and Hubei. Shaking was strong enough to cause damage to be felt over a 500,000 km² area, covering 130 counties. In Zhao'an, Fujian Province alone, more than 3,000 homes collapsed, trapping or killing many residents. The Chao'an District of Chaozhou City in Guangdong Province saw 20% of all residential buildings completely destroyed and another 40% partially collapsed. In the prefectural-level city of Jieyang, almost all of the homes in the area were damaged, with at least half of them completely destroyed. Many pagodas, homes and temples in

Suzhou Suzhou (; ; Suzhounese: ''sou¹ tseu¹'' , Mandarin: ), alternately romanized as Soochow, is a major city in southern Jiangsu province, East China. Suzhou is the largest city in Jiangsu, and a major economic center and focal point of trade ...

Guangzhou Guangzhou (, ; ; or ; ), also known as Canton () and alternatively romanized as Kwongchow or Kwangchow, is the capital and largest city of Guangdong province in southern China. Located on the Pearl River about north-northwest of Hong Kon ...

and

Nanjing Nanjing (; , Mandarin pronunciation: ), alternately romanized as Nanking, is the capital of Jiangsu province of the People's Republic of China. It is a sub-provincial city, a megacity, and the second largest city in the East China region. T ...

partially collapsed or were damaged due to the earthquake. The death toll from the disasters was at least a thousand, with many more wounded. The casualties included foreign traders and diplomats. It is the only earthquake in

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

's history to have caused damage. It was estimated to reach intensity VII on the

Modified Mercalli intensity scale The Modified Mercalli intensity scale (MM, MMI, or MCS), developed from Giuseppe Mercalli's Mercalli intensity scale of 1902, is a seismic intensity scale used for measuring the intensity of shaking produced by an earthquake. It measures the eff ...

, Since the

Royal Observatory, Hong Kong The Hong Kong Observatory is a weather forecast agency of the government of Hong Kong. The Observatory forecasts the weather and issues warnings on weather-related hazards. It also monitors and makes assessments on radiation levels in H ...

did not start operating long-period

seismograph A seismometer is an instrument that responds to ground noises and shaking such as caused by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and explosions. They are usually combined with a timing device and a recording device to form a seismograph. The output ...

s until 1921 According to the ''

Hongkong Telegraph ''The Hongkong Telegraph'' () was a Hong Kong newspaper founded in 1881. History It was first published as an afternoon daily on 15 June 1881 from offices on Wellington Street. It was founded by Robert Fraser-Smith, who was also the paper's ed ...

'', the quake threw the whole Central District into a state of panic. The shock lasted about half a minute and could be felt over the entirety of

Hong Kong Island Hong Kong Island is an Islands and peninsulas of Hong Kong, island in the southern part of Hong Kong. Known colloquially and on road signs simply as Hong Kong, the island has a population of 1,289,500 and its population density is 16,390/km ...

and

Kowloon Kowloon () is an urban area in Hong Kong comprising the Kowloon Peninsula and New Kowloon. With a population of 2,019,533 and a population density of in 2006, it is the most populous area in Hong Kong, compared with Hong Kong Island and t ...

.Bard, Solomon.

002 002, 0O2, O02, OO2, or 002 may refer to: Fiction *002, fictional British 00 Agent *''002 Operazione Luna'', *1965 Italian film *Zero Two, a ''Darling in the Franxx'' character Airports *0O2, Baker Airport *O02, Nervino Airport Astronomy *1996 ...

(2002). Voices from the Past: Hong Kong, 1842–1918. HK University Press. . pg 36 As a result of the earthquake, numerous fissures opened in the ground, most of them several meters long and tens of centimeters wide. However, larger cracks up to many tens of meters long and up to one meter wide also formed. One crack along a coastal road in Shantou measured up to 330 meters long, and began blasting hot water. In Zhangpu County numerous cracks as wide as 33 centimeters and 100 meters long erupted black and yellow mud but closed up after the tremor was over.

References

External links

Seismicity of Hong Kong

The contents of the publications of the Imperial Earthquake Investigation Committee
* {{DEFAULTSORT:1918 Shantou Earthquake Shantou Earthquakes in China History of Guangdong Shantou Earthquake, 1918 Shantou Earthquake, 1918

1918 tsunamis Tsunamis in China 1918 disasters in Asia 1918 disasters in China

Earthquake

Damage

See also

References

External links