Word: temblor
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Probably the most spectacular of the week's calamities began with a major earthquake under the Pacific Ocean 30 miles off the west coast of Nicaragua. The temblor spawned tsunamis, commonly known as tidal waves, that towered as high as 45 ft. in spots and rolled over dozens of small towns along 200 miles of coast. Surging inland, the waves crushed houses and hotels and swept people out to sea. Nicaraguan civil defense officials said 116 were killed and 150 missing...
...Palm Springs and Joshua Tree National Monument. On a map, the fault that was then broken looks like a shotgun taking dead aim at Landers, and in fact it was. Two months later, a minor earthquake started on a fault with no name. For a few seconds, this temblor rattled at a magnitude of 3. Suddenly, seismometer readings soared as the fracture unzipped a sequence of larger faults nearby. Then three hours after the Landers earthquake shivered to a stop, a 6.6 aftershock terrified the environs of Big Bear Lake, collapsing chimneys and toppling buildings...
...temblor that convulsed eastern Turkey was the country's most powerful since a 1983 quake that snuffed out 1,330 lives. In less than a minute, it leveled a quarter of Erzincan's center and reverberated across two neighboring provinces. By morning, rescue officials had dispatched tents, blankets and heavy equipment to aid the frightened survivors. Many had spent the night outdoors in subzero cold rather than wager against the earth's caprice...
...white flagpole and crowned it with the same gold-painted sphere that was knocked wildly askew on Oct. 17, 1989, by the strongest earthquake to strike the city since 1906. This week the American flag will be hoisted there once again, to mark the anniversary of last year's temblor, which registered 7.1 on the Richter scale, killed 63 people, injured 3,757 others and caused at least $6 billion in damage...
According to Filipino myth, the earthquakes that regularly ravage the archipelago are caused by the exertions of a legendary Tagalog king as he tries to free himself from his prison cave. Last week the king bestirred himself anew. At 4:26 p.m. Monday, a massive temblor shook the northern island of Luzon. At its epicenter in Nueva Ecija province, north of Manila, it measured 8.0 on the Richter scale (last month's quake in northwestern Iran registered 7.7). One of the worst-hit cities was the mountain resort of Baguio, 150 miles north of Manila, where dozens of buildings collapsed...