The early 21st century seems to have been plagued by very powerful earthquakes: 217 greater than Magnitude 7.0; 19 > Magnitude 8.0 and 2 >Magnitude 9.0. Although some lesser seismic events kill, those above M 7.0 have a far greater potential for fatal consequences. Over 700 thousand people have died from their effects: ~20 000 in the 2001 Gujarat earthquake (M 7.7); ~29 000 in 2003 Bam earthquake (M 6.6); ~250 000 in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that stemmed from a M 9.1 earthquake off western Sumatra; ~95 000 in the 2005 Kashmir earthquake (M7.6); ~87 000 in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake (M 7.9); up to 316 000 in the 2010 Haiti earthquake (M 7.0); ~20 000 in the 2011 tsunami that hit NE Japan from the M 9.0 Tohoku earthquake. The 26 December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunamis spelled out the far-reaching risk to populated coastal areas that face oceans prone to seismicity or large coastal landslips, but also the need for warning systems: tsunamis travel far more slowly than seismic waves and , except for directly adjacent areas, there is good chance of escape given a timely alert. Yet, historically http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/world/most_destructive.php, deadly risk is most often posed by earthquakes that occur beneath densely populated continental crust. Note that the most publicised earthquake that hit San Francisco in 1906 (at M 7.8) that lies on the world’s best-known fault, the San Andreas, caused between 700 and 3000 fatalities, a sizable proportion of which resulted from the subsequent fire. For continental earthquakes the biggest factor in deadly risk, outside of population density, is that of building standards.
It barely needs stating that earthquakes are due to movement on faults, and these can leave distinct signs at or near to the surface, such as scarps, offsets of linear features such as roads, and broad rises or falls in the land surface. However, if they are due to faulting that does not break the surface – so-called ‘blind’ faults – very little record is left for geologists to analyse. But if it is possible to see actual breaks and shifts exposed by shallow excavations through geologically young materials, as in road cuts or trenches, then it is possible to work out an actual history of movements and their dimensions. It has also become increasingly possible to date the movements precisely using radiometric or luminescence means: a key element in establishing seismic risk is the historic frequency of events on active faults. Some of the most dangerous active faults are those at mountain fronts, such as the Himalaya and the American cordilleras, which often take the form of surface-breaking thrusts that are relative easy to analyse, although little work has been done to date. A notable study is on the West Andean Thrust that breaks cover east of Chile’s capital Santiago with a population of around 6 million (Vargas, G. Et al. 2014. Probing large intraplate earthquakes at the west flank of the Andes. Geology, v. 42, p. 1083-1086). This fault forms a prominent series of scarps in Santiago’s eastern suburbs, but for most of its length along the Andean Front it is ‘blind’. The last highly destructive on-shore earthquake in western South America was due to thrust movement that devastated the western Argentinean city of Mendoza in 1861. But the potential for large intraplate earthquakes is high along the entire west flank of the Andes.
Vargas and colleagues from France and the US excavated a 5 m deep trench through alluvium and colluvium over a distance of 25 m across one of the scarps associated with the San Ramon Thrust. They found excellent evidence of metre-sized displacement of some prominent units within the young sediments, sufficient to detect the effects of two distinct, major earthquakes, each producing horizontal shifts of up to 5 m. Individual sediment strata were dateable using radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence techniques. The earlier displacement occurred at around 17-19 ka and the second at about 8 ka. Various methods of estimation of the likely earthquake magnitudes of the displacements yielded values of about M 7.2 to 7.5 for both. That is quite sufficient for devastation of now nearby Santiago and, worryingly, another movement may be likely in the foreseeable future.