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Map of China showing Shaanxi province (red) and the other provinces affected by the earthquake (orange)

The Shaanxi earthquake or Hua County Earthquake is the deadliest earthquake on record, killing approximately 830,000 people. It occurred on the morning of 14 February 1556 in China. There is some dispute about the date it occurred - dates including 2 February and 23 January have also been suggested. More than 97 counties in the provinces of Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan, Gansu, Hebei, Shandong, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu and Anhui were affected [1]. A 520-mile area was destroyed and in some counties, sixty percent of the population was killed [2]. Most of the population at the time lived in artificial caves in loess cliffs, many of which collapsed during the disaster. Tasks icon from Novell Evolution, GNU GPL licensed File links The following pages link to this file: Talk:Anti-Semitism Talk:Alchemy Talk:Ludwig van Beethoven Talk:Black Talk:Cell (biology) Talk:Blood alcohol content Talk:Copyright Talk:Non-carbon biology Talk:Christmas Talk:Copyleft Talk:Computer security Talk:Democracy... Image File history File links Shaangxi_1556_earthquake_map_of_provinces. ... Image File history File links Shaangxi_1556_earthquake_map_of_provinces. ... Global earthquake epicenters, 1963–1998 An earthquake is a sudden and sometimes catastrophic movement of a part of the Earths surface. ... February 14 is the 45th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... Events January 16 - Abdication of Emperor Charles V. His son, Philip II becomes King of Spain, while his brother Ferdinand becomes Holy Roman Emperor January 23 - The Shaanxi earthquake, the deadliest earthquake in history, occurs with its epicenter in Shaanxi province, China. ... February 2 is the 33rd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... January 23 is the 23rd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... Shaanxi (Simplified Chinese: 陕西; Traditional Chinese: 陝西; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Shan-hsi; Postal System Pinyin: Shensi, pronounced like Shahn-shee) is a north-central province of the Peoples Republic of China, and includes portions of the Loess Plateau on the middle reaches of the Yellow River as well as the Qinling... Shanxi (Chinese: 山西; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Shan-hsi; Postal System Pinyin: Shansi) is a northern province of the Peoples Republic of China. ... Henan (Chinese: 河南; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Ho-nan), is a province of the Peoples Republic of China, located in the central part of the country. ... Gansu (Simplified Chinese: 甘肃; Traditional Chinese: 甘肅; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Kan-su, or modified as Kan-suh) is a province located in the northwest of the Peoples Republic of China. ... Hebei (Chinese: 河北; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Ho-pei; Postal System Pinyin: Hopeh) is a northern province of the Peoples Republic of China. ... Shandong (Simplified Chinese: 山东; Traditional Chinese: 山東; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Shan-tung) is a coastal province of eastern Peoples Republic of China. ... Hubei (Chinese: 湖北; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Hu-pei; Postal System Pinyin: Hupeh) is a central province of the Peoples Republic of China. ... Hunan (Chinese: 湖南; pinyin: ) is a province of China, located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River and south of Lake Dongting (hence the name Hunan, meaning south of the lake). Hunan is sometimes called 湘 (pinyin: Xiāng) for short, after the Xiang River which runs through the province. ... Jiangsu (Simplified Chinese: 江苏; Traditional Chinese: 江蘇; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Chiang-su; Postal System Pinyin: Kiangsu) is a province of the Peoples Republic of China, located along the east coast of the country. ... Anhui (Chinese: 安徽; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: An-hui; Postal System Pinyin: Ngan-hui, Anhwei or An-hwei) is a province of the Peoples Republic of China. ... Among the classifications of soil types, loess (pronounced lös, from the German Löß, and ultimately from Swiss German lösch, loose) is a fine, silty, windblown (eolian) type of unconsolidated deposit, or, sometimes the term refers to the soil derived from it. ...

The earthquake

The Emperor at the time was Jiajing of the Ming dynasty. The Jiajing Emperor (September 16, 1507–January 23, 1567) was the 11th emperor of China (Ming dynasty) between 1521-1567. ... The Ming Dynasty was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644. ...

Modern estimates, based on geological data, give the earthquake a moment magnitude of approximately 8. While it is the most deadly earthquake, it is not the highest magnitude for an earthquake. Aftershocks continued several times a month for half a year [3]. The epicenter was in Hua county near Mount Hua in Shaanxi (Latitude 34.5, Longitude 109.7). It is also among the deadliest natural disasters in history, only outstripped by floods of China's Yellow River (Huang He). The moment magnitude scale (a successor to the Richter Scale), was introduced in 1979 by Tom Hanks and Hiroo Kanamori and is used by seismologists to compare the energy released by earthquakes. ... The epicenter is directly above the earthquakes focus. ... Mount Hua, known in Chinese as Huashan, is one of the five sacred mountains of China. ... A natural disaster is a catastrophe that occurs when a hazardous physical event (such as a volcanic eruption, earthquake, landslide, hurricane, or any of the other natural phenomena listed below) precipitates extensive damage to property, a large number of casualties, or both. ... Look up Flood on Wiktionary, the free dictionary A flood (in Old English flod, a word common to Teutonic languages; compare German Flut, Dutch vloed from the same root as is seen in flow, float) is an overflow of water, an expanse of water submerging land, a deluge. ... For other Yellow Rivers, see Yellow River (disambiguation). ...

The 1556 Shaanxi earthquake, however, was not the deadliest experience to the Chinese people. For instance, there were tens of millions of Chinese deaths during the Three Years of Natural Disasters from 1959 to 1961. The Three Years of Natural Disasters (S:三年自然灾害T:三年自然災害) refers to the period in the Peoples Republic of China between 1959 and 1961, in which a combination of poor economic planning and rounds of natural disasters caused widespread famine. ... 1959 (MCMLIX) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1961 (MCMLXI) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ...

In the annals of China it was described thus:

In the winter of 1556 AD an earthquake catastrophe occurred in the Shanxi and Shaanxi Provinces. In our Hua county, various misfortunes took place. Mountains and rivers changed places and roads were destroyed. In some places the ground suddenly rose up and formed new hills, or it sank in abruptly and became new valleys. In other areas, a stream burst out in an instant, or the ground broke and new gullies appeared. Huts, official houses, temples and city walls collapsed all of a sudden.

During the earthquake, many of the Forest of Stone steles were badly damaged. Of the 114 Kaicheng Stone Classics, 40 were broken in the earthquake. [4] Stele Forest (碑林; pinyin: Bēilín), aka Xian Stele Forest Museum or Xian Beilin Museum, is a museum for steles and stone sculptures which is located in Xian, China. ... Stele is also a concept in plant biology. ...

The scholar Qin Keda survived the earthquake and recorded details of it. His conclusions from this earthquake included that "at the very beginning of the earthquake, people indoors should not go out immediately. Just crouch down and wait for chances. Even if the nest is collapsed, some eggs in it may still be kept intact." [[5] This may indicate that many people were killed trying to flee while some who stayed put may have survived.

The Small Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi'an was reduced in height from 45 metres to 43.4 metres because of the earthquake. Small Wild Goose Pagoda, sometimes Little Goose Pagoda (Chinese: 小雁塔; pinyin: ), is one of two significant pagodas in the city of Xian, China. ... City nickname: Changan Location Location of Xian Government City Shaanxi Mayor Sun Qingyun Physical characteristics Area      Land      Water 9,983 km²      9,983 km²      0. ...

Loess caves

Millions of people at the time lived in artificial Loess caves on high cliffs in the area of the Loess Plateau. Loess is the name for the silty soil that has been deposited by wind storms on the plateau over the ages. The soft loess clay had formed in millions of years due to silt being blown to the area from the Gobi Desert. Loess is a highly erosion-prone soil that is susceptible to the forces of wind and water. The Loess Plateau and its dusty soil cover almost all of Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Gansu provinces and parts of others. Much of the population lived in dwellings called Yaodongs in these cliffs. This was the major contributing factor to the huge death toll. The earthquake caused landslides which destroyed the caves. The Loess Plateau covers an area of some 640,000 km² in the upper and middle parts of China’s Yellow River. ... Among the classifications of soil types, loess (pronounced lös, from the German Löß, and ultimately from Swiss German lösch, loose) is a fine, silty, windblown (eolian) type of unconsolidated deposit, or, sometimes the term refers to the soil derived from it. ... Silt refers to soil or rock particles of a certain very small size range (see grain size). ... The Gobi (Mongolian Chinese is a large desert region in northern China and southern Mongolia. ... This article is about artifical caves used as dwellings, especially those in north China called yaodongs, as opposed to natural caves. ... This entry refers to the geological term landslide. ...

Cost of Damage

The cost of damage done by the 1556 Shaanxi earthquake is almost impossible to measure in modern terms. The loss of human life, however, has traditionally been put at 830,000. The accompanying property damage had to have been so great as to be nearly incalculable - an entire region of inner China had been, for lack of a better term, reduced to nothing, and an estimated 60% of the region's population annihilated. The cost of damage would have been equivalent to the absolute destruction caused by the detonation of a nuclear weapon (though without the standard effects of such, of course). The cost cannot be estimated, and the destruction of property and life were staggering.

See also

• List of earthquakes

The following is a list of major earthquakes. ...

Reference

• Annals of China quoted from p.100 of 30 Years' Review of China's Science and Technology, 1949-79 as seen on Google Print

External link

• Ruins of Hua County Earthquake (1556)