Everything can change in the blink of an eye, and in September 2023, that's precisely what happened for hundreds of thousands of people living in Morocco. The stories that started to unfold after a deadly earthquake struck the country's High Atlas Mountains were the sort of thing one might hope were the stuff of fiction, but they were all too real. Hakim Idlhousein lived in the village of Tinzert, and told CNN, "It took 10 seconds for the whole village to disappear."
Everything can change in the blink of an eye, and in September 2023, that's precisely what happened for hundreds of thousands of people living in Morocco. The stories that started to unfold after a deadly earthquake struck the country's High Atlas Mountains were the sort of thing one might hope were the stuff of fiction, but they were all too real. Hakim Idlhousein lived in the village of Tinzert, and told CNN, "It took 10 seconds for the whole village to disappear."
Although the Richter scale of measuring earthquake magnitudes wasn't devised by Charles F. Richter until 1935, people have been recording earthquakes for thousands of years, and human history has seen its fair share of devastating earthquakes. Whenever the tectonic plates start to shift, cities are liable to be destroyed and tens of thousands can lose their lives. Sometimes, the majority of the destruction can even occur in the aftermath of the earthquake, either in the form of tsunamis or failures of relief aid.
Natural disasters are a part of life on Earth. Although they can be huge and devastating, there are plenty of ways humans have learned to prepare for them. You might have participated in a tornado drill at least once before, or at least kept an eye on your phone for updates during severe weather. And everyone has seen hurricane forecasts on the news as experts track tropical storms headed toward land.
Earthquakes, per Interesting Engineering, occur when the tectonic plates of the Earth's outermost layer jostle around. There are a number of ways that regions prone to the devastating effects of these natural disasters battle to prepare themselves for such events. For example, base isolation is a means of separating the foundations of vulnerable buildings from the solid ground (or not-so-solid ground in these cases) to reduce the impact of seismic shifts. As explained by Interesting Engineering, the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco boasts a foundation that is more than 50 feet deep and brilliantly designed to move with the power of an earthquake rather than against it. The willow tree bends while the oak tree breaks, as the saying goes.
Earthquakes are daily occurrences all over planet Earth. They happen due to shifts in the tectonic plates that make up the earth's crust. These plates can crash together, split apart, or slide against each one another. Earth is currently the only known planet which is made up of tectonic plates. However, other planets experience shakes and tremors as well (via Eos).
