• Question: what was the most powerful earthquake?

    Asked by ED to Fiona, Hazel, Jacque, K on 16 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Hazel Gibson

      Hazel Gibson answered on 16 Mar 2018:


      Well that depends on how you measure ‘most powerful’. Often we use the scientific earthquake magnitude scale and in that case, the most powerful earthquake recorded was the 1960 Chile earthquake which measured 9.5 magnitude. But we can also use the impacts of the earthquake to measure how powerful it was, such as the number of deaths or the amount of property damage. In that case we would also consider the 1556 China earthquake, with approximately 830,000 deaths and the 2016 Japan which had an estimated 3.5 billion dollars property damage. But all of these are just the -recorded- earthquakes – they could have been many more powerful ones before records began…

    • Photo: Jacque Cilliers

      Jacque Cilliers answered on 16 Mar 2018:


      The 1960 Valdivia earthquake was a magnitude 9.5 and the most powerful ever recorded.

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