Forces of Nature - Earthquakes the Unpredictable Killers

One second everything is calm and quiet. The next the earth is trembling, the ground is shaking and gigantic fissures are appearing. Buildings swing from side to side and are destroyed. Burst water pipes cause flooding. Gas escaping from gas pipes catches fire. Glass splinters rain upon people. And then the aftershocks have not even started. There are about one million earthquakes each year, caused by motion of the tectonic plates. We do not notice most of them, but powerful earthquakes may reduce entire cities to ruins with a force equivalent to that of about 12,000 nuclear bombs. They cause enormous material damage, kill thousands of people, injure tens of thousands and leave millions of people homeless. Some of the most powerful and devastating earthquakes in this century have been the earthquakes in Tokyo in 1923, in southern China in §976 and in California in 1994. See how rescue workers in Mexico City in 1985 dig their way into the heaps of rubble to rescue infants who have been buried in the ruins for a week. “Earthquake” shows you what can happen at the interface between tectonic plates.