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Biggest Earthquakes on earth
The most powerful recorded earthquakes in history. -
North Pacific coast of America
The only North American account of one of the continent's largest earthquakes comes from the oral history of native Americans near Vancouver island which describes how the large community of Pachena bay was wiped out by a huge wave. Across the pacific, the quake was accurately recorded by Japanese observers of the large tsunami that struck Japan on 27 January 1700. -
Lisbon
The near-total destruction of Lisbon and the deaths of a quarter of the city's population were caused by an earthquake, followed by a tsunami and fire, that was felt in north Africa, France and northern Italy. -
Arica, Peru (now part of Chile)
Hawaii also felt the force of the tsunami created by this pacific basin earthquake, but here the destruction was just as heavy in South America with the city of Arequipa destroyed and 25,000 killed. The quake was felt as far away as La Paz in Bolivia. -
coast of Ecuador
Emanating from the ocean off Ecuador and Colombia, the quake generated a tsunami that killed between 500 and 1,500 people along a coastline from Central America to San Francisco. To the west in Hawaii, rivers suddenly drained about 12 hours after the first shocks, then were submerged as a series of successively larger waves flooded the coast. -
Assam-Tibet
Seventy villages simply disappeared in the string of disasters generated by an earthquake with an epicentre in Tibetan Rima but which wrought most destruction in India's Assam state. -
Kamchatka
The volcanic Russian peninsula was near the epicentre of the quake, but it was the Hawaiian islands that took the brunt of the tsunami that caused a million dollars' worth of damage as waves scoured the coasts, ripping boats from their moorings and, in Honolulu harbour, lifting a cement barge before throwing it down on to a freighter. -
Chile
The world's most powerful earthquake left 4,485 people dead and injured and 2 million homeless after it struck southern Chile in 1960. The port of Puerto Saavedra was destroyed in the ensuing tsunami, which caused $550m worth of damage in Chile and killed a further 170 people as five-metre waves hit the coasts of Japan and the Philippines. -
Prince William Sound, Alaska
The Gulf of Alaska was devastated by the Prince William Sound earthquake that caused landslides in Anchorage and raised parts of outlying islands by as much as 11 metres. The resulting tsunami reached heights of 67 metres as it swept into the shallow Valdez inlet and was responsible for most of the 128 deaths and $311m worth of damage. -
Off the west coast of northern Sumatra
The deadliest tsunami in history was felt in 14 countries across Asia and east Africa, triggered by a "megathrust" as the Indian tectonic plate was forced beneath the Burmese plate. Indonesia was the worst affected with an estimated 170,000 of the nearly 230,000 dead. -
Bio-Bio, Chile
The region around Concepción has been recorded as a centre for seismic shocks since the 16th century, but few have been as devastating as the early morning quake that generated a Pacific-wide tsunami and cost the lives of 521 people. With a further 12,000 injured and more than 800,000 left homeless, Chile was left reeling at the scale of a disaster that would cost the nation $30bn by the end of 2010.
