It set the soft loess hills of north China flowing like liquid, burying whole villages under landslides. Well over two hundred thousand died — among the deadliest earthquakes ever recorded.
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DownloadThe 1920 Haiyuan earthquake struck on December 16, 1920, registering magnitude 7.9 (moment magnitude, Mw). Each whole step on the moment-magnitude scale is roughly 32 times more energy, so this released on the order of 813× the energy of a magnitude 6.0 earthquake.
Its epicenter was located near 36.36°N, 105.55°E, at a depth of about 15 km — a shallow crustal earthquake. Shallow earthquakes like this release their energy close to the surface, which is why the shaking near the epicenter was so violent.
An estimated 235,502 people were killed.