The 1906 Meishan earthquake () was centered on ''Moe'akhe'' (), Kagi-cho,

Japanese Taiwan The island of Taiwan, together with the Penghu Islands, became a dependency of Japan in 1895, when the Qing dynasty ceded Fujian-Taiwan Province in the Treaty of Shimonoseki after the Japanese victory in the First Sino-Japanese War. The sho ...

(modern-day

Meishan Meishan (; Sichuanese Pinyin: Mi2san1; local pronunciation: ; ), formerly known as Meizhou () or Qingzhou (), is a prefecture-level city with 2,955,219 inhabitants as of 2020 census whom 1,232,648 lived in the built-up (or metro) area made of th ...

Chiayi County Chiayi County (Mandarin pinyin: ''jiā yì xiàn''; Hokkien POJ: ''Ka-gī-koān'') is a county in southwestern Taiwan surrounding but not including Chiayi City. It is the sixth largest county in Taiwan. Name The former Chinese placename was ...

Taiwan 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 nort ...

) and occurred on March 17. Referred to at the time as the Great Kagi earthquake (), it is the third-deadliest earthquake in Taiwan's

recorded history Recorded history or written history describes the historical events that have been recorded in a written form or other documented communication which are subsequently evaluated by historians using the historical method. For broader world hist ...

, claiming around 1,260 lives. The shock had a

surface wave magnitude The surface wave magnitude (M_s) scale is one of the magnitude scales used in seismology to describe the size of an earthquake. It is based on measurements of Rayleigh surface waves that travel along the uppermost layers of the Earth. This ma ...

of 6.8 and a

Mercalli intensity 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 ...

of IX (''Violent'').

Earthquake

The earthquake struck at 06:43

local time Local time is the time observed in a specific locality. There is no canonical definition. Originally it was mean solar time, but since the introduction of time zones it is generally the time as determined by the time zone in effect, with daylight s ...

on 17 March 1906, at a focal depth of 6 kilometres (3.7 mi). The event created the

Meishan fault Meishan (; Sichuanese Pinyin: Mi2san1; local pronunciation: ; ), formerly known as Meizhou () or Qingzhou (), is a prefecture-level city with 2,955,219 inhabitants as of 2020 census whom 1,232,648 lived in the built-up (or metro) area made of th ...

, a fault with a length of 25 kilometres (15.5 mi) stretching through modern-day

. Aftershocks continued throughout the day, hampering rescue efforts.

Damage

Reports vary slightly, but according to the official

Central Weather Bureau The Central Weather Bureau (CWB; ) is the government meteorological research and forecasting institution of the Republic of China (Taiwan). In addition to meteorology, the Central Weather Bureau also makes astronomical observations, reports on se ...

summary, the casualties and damage were as follows: *Deaths: 1,258 *Injuries: 2,385 *Houses destroyed: 6,769 *Houses damaged: 14,218

Fusakichi Omori was a pioneer Japanese seismologist, second chairman of seismology at the Imperial University of Tokyo and president of the Japanese Imperial Earthquake Investigation Committee. Omori is also known for his observation describing the aftershock ...

, a pioneering

seismologist Seismology (; from Ancient Greek σεισμός (''seismós'') meaning "earthquake" and -λογία (''-logía'') meaning "study of") is the scientific study of earthquakes and the propagation of elastic waves through the Earth or through other ...

from

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

who arrived shortly after the earthquake believed that the high number of casualties was due to the construction of the local houses. Loosely cemented with mud, the combination of sun-dried mud brick walls and heavy roofing beams was thought to be responsible for many dwellings collapsing, killing or injuring the inhabitants. He also found evidence of

soil liquefaction Soil liquefaction occurs when a cohesionless saturated or partially saturated soil substantially loses strength and stiffness in response to an applied stress such as shaking during an earthquake or other sudden change in stress condition, in ...

, and stated that the town of Bishō (Meishan) had been completely destroyed by the quake. Omori's figures give slightly different casualty rates, and very different statistics for building damage: *Deaths: 1,266 *Injuries: 2,476 *Houses destroyed: 7,284 *Houses damaged: 30,021

Reaction

The veteran missionary William Campbell wrote: The Japanese colonial authorities in Taihoku (Taipei) sent teams of medical personnel to assist, and Campbell reported that shortly after the earthquake reconstruction efforts were well advanced. At the time some writers suggested a link between the Meishan quake and the great

1906 San Francisco earthquake At 05:12 Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the coast of Northern California was struck by a major earthquake with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (''Extreme''). High-intensity sha ...

, which occurred a month later, while some religious groups linked it not only with the San Francisco disaster, but also an earlier earthquake in

Cambria Cambria is a name for Wales, being the Latinised form of the Welsh name for the country, . The term was not in use during the Roman period (when Wales had not come into existence as a distinct entity). It emerged later, in the medieval period, a ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

and other natural disasters as a sign of the end-times.

References

External links

* {{Earthquakes in Taiwan Meishan Earthquake, 1906

March 1906 events Chiayi County Earthquakes in Taiwan

Earthquake

Damage

Reaction

See also

References

External links