The 1981 Dawu earthquake occurred on ,
[ in ]Sichuan
Sichuan (; zh, c=, labels=no, ; zh, p=Sìchuān; alternatively romanized as Szechuan or Szechwan; formerly also referred to as "West China" or "Western China" by Protestant missions) is a province in Southwest China occupying most of the ...
, China. Registering a surface wave magnitude of 6.8, the earthquake killed about 150 people and injured roughly 300 more. It caused comprehensive damage within close range of its epicenter.
Background
China has an extensive history of catastrophic earthquakes that ranges back to 1290. The first verified earthquake took place in Chih-li, killing roughly 100,000 people. The next great earthquake was probably the 1556 Shaanxi earthquake
The 1556 Shaanxi earthquake (formerly romanized ''Shensi''), known in Chinese colloquially by its regnal year as "" ('' Jiājìng Dàdìzhèn'') or officially by its epicenter as "" ('' Huàxiàn Dìzhèn''), occurred in the early morning of 23 ...
, the most devastating earthquake of all time. Roughly 830,000 were killed by the event. Other earthquakes in 1917, 1918, 1920, 1923, 1925, 1927, 1931, 1932, 1933, 1948, 1950, 1966, 1969, 1970, 1974, 1975, 1976 each killed at least one thousand people. Since 1981, earthquake fatalities have diminished greatly, though have not been stopped. As recently as 2008, an earthquake in Sichuan killed nearly 90,000 people.
Characteristics
The epicenter was pinpointed to Dawu County in Sichuan. Its official magnitude was 6.8 and its surface wave magnitude reached 6.6.strike-slip faulting
In geology, a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock-mass movements. Large faults within Earth's crust result from the action of plate tectonic ...
[ on the Daofu fault. The Daofu fault forms part of the ]Xianshuihe fault system
The Xianshuihe fault system is a major active sinistral (left-lateral) strike-slip fault zone in southwestern China, at the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau. It has been responsible for many major earthquakes, and is one of the most seismicall ...
, which experienced a sequence of four earthquakes greater than 6.0 between 1973 and 1982, with each event triggering the next in the sequence by changing the stress state.surface rupture
In seismology, surface rupture (or ground rupture, or ground displacement) is the visible offset of the ground surface when an earthquake rupture along a fault affects the Earth's surface. Surface rupture is opposed by buried rupture, where th ...
has been reported for the 1981 earthquake.
Damage and casualties
The earthquake killed roughly 150 people and 300 or so were injured. Damage was considerable, but limited to a small zone around the area.[
]
References
External links
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{{Earthquakes in China
Dawu Earthquake, 1981
Dawu Earthquake, 1981
Earthquakes in Sichuan