Today in Earthquake History

On December 25th...

• M5.9 - Flores Island Region, Indonesia, 1982

  Thirteen people killed, 390 injured, 1,875 homes destroyed and other buildings damaged. Landslides and unconfirmed local tsunami in eastern Flores.

• M7.9 - Gansu (Kansu), China, 1932

  275 deaths.
  Over 1,100 houses collapsed in the Changma area. Damage occurred from Dunhuang to Gaotai. Surface rupture or deformation observed from Changma east intermittently for more than 110 km (65 mi). There were landslides, ground fissures and sandblows in the area. Also felt in parts of Qinghai (Tsinghai) and Xinjiang (Sinkiang). One source [145] lists the death toll as 70,000, but this does not seem to be confirmed by the damage descriptions nor by other sources.

• M6.4 - Hemet-San Jacinto, California, 1899

  Property damage from this earthquake was most severe at Hemet and San Jacinto, west of Palm Springs. Six people were killed by falling adobe walls at Saboba, a few kilometers east of San Jacinto. The estimated property loss of $50,000 appears to be low.
  
  Only two chimneys remained standing in Hemet, where brick buildings partly collapsed and wood-frame buildings shifted off their foundations. A ground fissure about 46 meters long extended under a house near Hemet; the house was wrenched and twisted severely. The fissure may have been surface rupture in the San Jacinto fault zone. Many brick buildings were partly wrecked at San Jacinto. At Riverside, chimneys were overthrown, and brick buildings were cracked. This severe shock was felt north to Bakersfield (Kern County), south to Jacumba (San Diego County), and northeast to Needles (San Bernardino County). It also was reported felt at Seligman, Arizona Many aftershocks occurred on December 25 and 26.
  Abridged from Seismicity of the United States, 1568-1989 (Revised), by Carl W. Stover and Jerry L. Coffman, U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1527, United States Government Printing Office, Washington: 1993.