A Study of Recent Earthquakes

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Walter Scott publishing Company, Limited, 1905 - Earthquakes - 355 pages
 

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Page 91 - Overthrow of movable objects; fall of plaster, ringing of church bells; general panic, without damage to buildings.
Page 91 - General awakening of those asleep; general ringing of bells; oscillation of chandeliers; stopping of clocks; visible agitation of trees and shrubs; some startled persons leaving their dwellings.
Page 91 - Microseismic shock: recorded by a single seismograph or by seismographs of the same model, but not by several seismographs of different kinds; the shock felt by an experienced observer.
Page 226 - The rumbling preceded the shock by about two seconds . . . and the shock reached its maximum violence almost at once, in the course of the first two or three seconds. The ground began to rock violently, and in a few seconds it was impossible to stand upright, and I had to sit down suddenly on the road. The shock was of considerable duration, and maintained roughly the same amount of violence from the beginning to the end.
Page 21 - Houses seem to have been precipitated to the ground in every direction of azimuth. There seems no governing law, nor any indication of a prevailing direction of overturning force. It is only by first gaining some commanding point, whence a general view over the whole field of ruin can be had, and observing its places of greatest and least destruction, and then by patient examination, compass in hand, of many details of overthrow, house by house and street by street, analysing each detail and comparing...
Page 94 - Accompanying the sound, there was a perceptible tremor of the building, not more marked, however, than would be caused by the passage of a car or dray along the street. For perhaps two or three seconds the occurrence excited no surprise or comment. Then, by swift degrees, or all at once, it is difficult to say which, the sound deepened in volume, the tremor became more decided, the ear caught the rattle of window sashes...
Page 212 - The latter is an area which has never been investigated with thoroughness by modern stratigraphicäl methods, and in which it is difficult to trace faults. It therefore appears to me not improbable that the earthquakes were due to slips along a continuation of this fault. Whether this be the case or not, however, it is clear that the earthquake-fault must pass between the anticlinal areas of Woolhope and May Hill, the former being on the northeast, and the latter on the southwest, side of the fault....
Page 217 - ... observations of coincidence undergoes a marked decrease in the inner ring in the counties traversed by the longer axis of the isoseismal lines, while in those which lie along the shorter axis it is nearly constant. The much weaker Leicester earthquake of 1893 leads to a somewhat similar conclusion. The epoch of maximum intensity of the sound preceded that of the shock at 19 places, which are, as a rule, near the ends of the longer axis of the disturbed area ; and coincided with it at 18 places,...
Page 117 - The air was filled with a whitish cloud of dry, stifling dust, arising from the lime and mortar of the shattered buildings, which, falling upon the pavements, had been reduced to powder. Through this cloud, dense as a fog, the gas jets flickered feebly, shedding but little light. On every side were hurrying forms of men and women, bareheaded, partially dressed, some almost nude, and all nearly crazed with fear and excitement. All around were seen the wounded and the terrified — men in their shirt-sleeves...
Page 95 - ... buildings as though they were being shaken by the hand of an immeasurable power, with intent to tear their joints asunder and scatter their foundations abroad, as a tree casts its over-ripened fruit before the breath of the gale. There was no intermission of the vibration of the mighty subterranean engine; from the first to the last it was a continuous jar, adding force with every moment, and as it approached and reached the climax of its manifestation it seemed for a few terrible seconds as...

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