Images

1906 earthquake damage to home on Howard and 17th Streets in San Francisco. Liquefaction, the phenomenon of saturated soils losing their stiffness and strength during shaking, caused structures to tilt and collapse.

Strong shaking during the 1868 Hayward Fault earthquake caused the second story of the Alameda County Courthouse in San Leandro to collapse (photo courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California). The inset photo shows the courthouse before the quake

Looking straight up from the center of the Shake Table.

This photo was taken by USGS seismologist Susan Hough two months after the magnitude-7 earthquake struck Port-au-Prince on Jan. 12, 2010. Dr. Hough traveled to Haiti with USGS colleagues Doug Given, Mark Meremonte, and J. Zebulon Maharrey to install seismometers, which monitor the earth's movement and can detect and measure aftershocks.

The May 12, 2008, Great Sichuan Earthquake, also called the Wenchuan Earthquake, occurred at 14:28 local time, in Sichuan Province, China. The earthquake magnitudes were Mw = 7.9 (USGS), Ms = 8.0 (Chinese Earthquake Administration). The epicenter was 80 km west-northwest of Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan province.

A Cessna Grand Caravan airplane took measurements over Virginia's Louisa, Goochland and Fluvanna counties. The data collected will help USGS scientists locate buried geologic features associated with the August 23, 2011 earthquake and its aftershocks. Surveys were conducted from 7/15- 7/25.

Damage to a house in Louisa County, Virginia, after a magnitude 5.8 earthquake on August 23, 2011.

Blue tents in Longmen near epicenter.

Firemen and the rescue team building tents for homeless people in a middle school square.

Damage to a village house. Longmenxiang.

Geologists driving a core into marsh sediment to document interbedded peat and silt that records sudden vertical land movements associated with megathrust fault slip during large earthquakes.

Shake Table at dusk, lit by flourescent lights installed under the table in addition to a high-powered, hand-held flashlight.

An 8.5-minute exposure taken on a moonless night with a blue-gel'd flashlight to fill in the top of the shake table.

A 30-second exposure with the fluorescent lights underneath the table switched on for a split second.

D.V. Rogers in the "Bunker," the control center for the project. Real-time earthquakes are received via satellite internet.

Damage to a house in Louisa County, Virginia, after a magnitude 5.8 earthquake on August 23, 2011.

Damage to a village house.

The earthwork in context of the small town of Parkfield, CA.

Photo taken from a kite-lofted camera, showing the shake table and control bunker.

View looking southeast along the surface trace of the San Andreas fault in the Carrizo Plain, north of Wallace Creek. Elkhorn Rd. meets the fault near the top of the photo.

Earthquake-triggered landslide on south coast of Haiti near village of Nan Diamant.