Word: guatemala
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Crumbled Adobe. Those who could least afford to rebuild their lives and homes were hardest hit. Most hotels, office buildings and homes in upper-class neighborhoods in Guatemala City survived. Ever since a 1917 earthquake that destroyed the city, such buildings have been designed with shocks in mind. The heaviest damage and most of the casualties occurred in country villages where crumbling adobe walls dropped heavy tile roofs on sleeping victims. The highland Indians were stunned at how easily their homes had disintegrated. "We need wood," said one who had saved his family of six but lost his house...
Others died in wood and tin shantytowns on Guatemala City's outskirts. Even as the tremors subsided, the shanty dwellers clung resolutely to the rubble, shivering in the cold night air. They had little choice-the land actually belonged to the municipality and since they had no title, the only recourse was to claim it again as squatters, once bulldozers had swept away the debris...
...Considering Guatemala's modest (6 million) population, comparable quake damage in the U.S. would have killed 672,000 people and left 37 million homeless...
...Even as Guatemala was struggling to recover from its awesome earthquake, geophysicists were trying to determine its cause. Their explanation: a battle between the gigantic plates that make up the lithosphere, or crust of the earth (TIME cover, Sept...
...Guatemala quake appears to have been caused by the movement of the two plates opposite the Cocos-the northern portion of the Americas Plate, which carries Mexico, the U.S. and Canada and generally moves in a westerly direction, and the Caribbean Plate, which carries part of Central and South America and moves toward the east, relative to its neighbor. This movement is slow, perhaps no more than 1½ in. a year. But the strains created as these two huge masses slide against each other are enormous. For at least 200 years, there has been no major movement where...