Thank you Paul. That was a great resource. I appreciate it.
The Mississippi River changed course in at least one place due to those earthquakes or most likely because of the largest, and I have read that it actually ran backwards for a short period in some places. Yikes.
What concerns me these days is that there is now massive population in the area. And building codes back there are nothing like California’s. At least that’s my perception.
Take care.
Hi, DoughtyOne,
Yes, you are correct on all counts. If you follow some of those links to some of the accounts of the time, well, suffice it to say that until very recently, some of those accounts were regarded as too fantastic to be true, but modern research has proven that in fact many were quite accurate.
One thing not well known is that these were a series of heavy earthquakes over a 2 month period - one paper* postulates 6-9 events of 7.0 or more, with one at 7.9, another @ 8.0, and another @ 8.1. At least 18 quakes were felt all the way to Washington, DC, or on the eastern seaboard. Many of these were long duration quakes, and they were in winter, to make it worse for the local inhabitants. I would speculate that only the best modern earthquake resistant buildings would survive such extended trauma without significant damage.
A good prayer would be that such a scenario does not occur in China — maybe someone more familiiar with the seismology of the affected area in China could weigh in on that?
*Link to the article: http://www.ceri.memphis.edu/compendium/enigma.pdf