Unit 8. Reading

Earthquakes

Every year there are over 150,000 earthquakes around the world. Many are very small and people don’t notice them. Others, like the ones in Haiti in 2010, or Japan in 2011, cause terrible damage and can destroy whole towns and cities.

Scientists study the Earth and know where earthquakes are likely to happen. Some countries have a much higher risk than others. Japan has, on average, 1,500 earthquakes every year. In Britain there are 140. The earthquakes in Britain are usually very small and don’t cause damage to people’s houses. In Japan there are much bigger earthquakes, and many modern buildings are specially built so that they don’t get damaged by the movement of the Earth.

One of the big problems with earthquakes is that we don’t know when they are going to happen. Scientists can tell us where a big earthquake will probably happen, but they can’t tell us the date or the time. If we could predict earthquakes, we could prepare for them. If we were prepared, we could save lives by moving people away from the earthquake area.

In the future things may be different, however. In the 1970s, Chinese scientists noticed something interesting about the behaviour of animals. In the winter of 1974 lots of snakes woke up from their winter sleep and came out into the cold. That winter there were several earthquakes in the north of China. In January the following year, people around the city of Haicheng noticed that lots of farm animals like cows and horses were nervous and refused to go into buildings at night. In February there was a large earthquake in the area. Its centre was in Haicheng.