ABSTRACT
In the first six years of the twenty-first century, over 200 fatal earthquakes were recorded with a total loss of life of over 360,000 people. This compares with less than 2 million recorded fatalities in the previous century. The greatest death toll from a recent single event occurred in the 2004 Sumatra earthquake and tsunami when about 230,000 people lost their lives. Impacts on a similar, or even larger scale, have been previously recorded. The 1976 Tangshan earthquake in China had an official death toll of 255,000, although some estimates put it as high as 655,000 or 750,000 people, whilst the 1920 Haiyuan (Gansu) earthquake, also in China, is thought to have killed about 200,000.
