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As you’ve seen and heard before, earthquakes are natural disasters that humans cannot control. Sometimes earthquakes can be very dangerous and people need to know more about where earthquakes come from, and how to protect themselves from them and any other natural disasters. The next paragraphs will talk about facts and the reasons why earthquakes occur.

Earthquakes are the shaking, rolling or sudden shock of the earth’s surface. They are the Earth’s natural means of releasing stress. More than a million occur in the world each year. The west coast is most at risk of having an earthquake, but earthquakes can happen in the Midwest and along the East Coast. Earthquakes can be felt over large areas although they usually last less than a minute. Earthquakes cannot be predicted although scientists are working on it.

There are about 20 plates along the surface of the earth that move continuously and slowly past each other. When the plates squeeze or stretch, huge rocks form at their edges and the rocks shift with great force, causing an earthquake. As the plates move they put forces on themselves and each other. When the force is large enough, the crust is forced to break. When the break occurs, the stress is released as energy which moves through the Earth in the form of waves, which we feel and call an earthquake.

Shaking and ground rupture are the main effects created by earthquakes, principally resulting in more or less severe damage to buildings or other rigid structures. The severity of the effect depends on the complex combination of the earthquake magnitude. Ground rupture is a major risk for large engineering structures such as dams, bridges and nuclear power stations and requires careful mapping of existing faults to identify any likely to break the ground surface within the life of the structure.

The largest recorded earthquake in the United States was a magnitude 9.2 that struck Prince William...