China quake hits close to home for AU student

Donathan Prater
Staff Writer
Published: May 12, 2008

At latest count, the estimates of those killed in a 7.9 -magnitude earthquake that rocked China’s Sichuan province has risen to nearly 10,000 with that number expected to rise.

The earthquake was reported to have been felt as far away from China as Hong Kong and Thailand.

Yuan Tian, 28, spent a part of her Monday morning contacting her family members via Internet who reside in Chongqing, the largest and most populous of China’s municipalities.

“When I heard about the earthquake, I just had to find out if they were OK,” said Tian, a Auburn University graduate student who has spent the past two years in Auburn.

Tian’s family lives about 300 miles from Xinhua, the epicenter of the earthquake and while they felt the shock of the quake, they were left unharmed.

And while the loss of life in this latest seismic event saddens David Elton, the extent of the damage doesn’t surprise the Auburn University civil engineering professor.

“Richter Scale measurements indicate how much energy is released during an earthquake,” said Elton. “Anything 5.5 and above, you’ll start to see significant damage to structures like buildings, bridges and roadways.”

Reports Monday stated that several hundred Chinese students were buried in the rubble of collapsed school buildings in some of the hardest areas impacted by the earthquake.

“As the earthquake magnitude increases from 5 to 6 and so on, based on Richter Scale measurements, you’re potentially looking at 10 times the damage each time that number increases,” Elton said.

The numbers may be difficult for some to wrap their minds around, but Elton has a much simpler analogy to describe the anatomy of an earthquake.

“Just try to picture the surface of the Earth like the outer shell of a hard-boiled egg with cracks in it,” said Elton. “Those cracked pieces will lean on each other for a while before they’re eventually forced out of place and jump atop one another.”

Just below the Earth’s epicenter is where the earth actually moves. Faults (weak spots and fractures in the earth’s crust) begin to rub against each other in various directions, according to the U.S. Geological Survey Web site.

The earthquake starts below the earth at the point of the fracture and when it reached the surface creates what is known as the epicenter of the earthquake.

Seismic activity in that area of the world isn’t out of the ordinary.

“A large cracks in one of the Earth’s tectonic plates sits along the eastern area of China,” Elton said.

In recent past, China experienced a 6.8-magnitude earthquake in February 2003 in the Xingjian province that claimed at least 250 lives.