The ground gives youten seconds.
Earthquakes are the one hazard with no warning and no season. You cannot watch a forecast and prepare the week before. Everything that saves you is decided in advance — how your furniture is fixed, where your shoes are, whether your family agreed a meeting point.
What the record saysabout your ground.
Every recorded earthquake within 250 km of you, since 1970.
No location yet
Working out where you are.
Four things decide what the shaking does to you.
Proximity to a fault
Shaking falls off fast with distance. A moderate quake directly beneath a city does more damage than a large one a hundred kilometres out to sea.
Ground and soil
Soft sediment and reclaimed land amplify shaking and can liquefy, turning solid ground to slurry. Rock shakes less. Two streets on different ground can see completely different outcomes.
Building age and code
The single strongest predictor of whether a building kills the people in it. Unreinforced masonry and soft-storey ground floors are the known killers; post-code reinforced structures usually stand.
Time of day
A quake at 3am traps people in bed in the dark; the same quake at 3pm catches them in the street under falling glass and facades. The hazard is identical, the injuries are not.
The plan, in three parts.
Before
- Strap water heaters, bookcases, wardrobes and TVs to studs. Falling furniture causes a large share of injuries.
- Store nothing heavy above a bed.
- Keep sturdy shoes and work gloves beside every bed — broken glass is the most common injury.
- Know where the gas, water and electrical shut-offs are, and keep the right tool tied to the meter.
- Agree two meeting points, one outside the home and one outside the neighbourhood, plus an out-of-area contact. Local lines jam while long-distance and text often get through.
- Run a Drop, Cover, Hold On drill twice a year, and do one in the dark.
During
- DROP before the shaking drops you. COVER your head and neck. HOLD ON to your shelter and move with it.
- Stay put until it stops. Most injuries happen to people trying to move.
- Do not run outside. Falling glass and facade debris make the street the dangerous place.
- Do not stand in a doorway. In a modern building the frame is no stronger than the wall.
- If you are in bed, stay there and cover your head with a pillow.
- If you are outdoors, get to open ground away from buildings and power lines, then drop.
After
- Expect aftershocks and be ready to Drop, Cover, Hold On again.
- Check yourself first, then others. Control bleeding before anything else.
- Shoes and gloves on before you take a step.
- If the building is damaged, get out and stay out.
- If you smell gas, shut it off at the meter, leave, and switch nothing electrical on or off.
- Text rather than call, and leave the network for emergency traffic.
- If trapped, cover your mouth and tap on a pipe or use a whistle. Shout only as a last resort — it costs energy and fills your lungs with dust.
Where you are when it hits.
Indoors
Drop, cover and hold on where you are. Get under a sturdy table if one is within a step or two; otherwise crouch against an interior wall away from windows and cover your head and neck. Stay off stairs and away from anything that can topple.
In bed
Stay in bed and cover your head with a pillow. The floor in the dark is full of glass, and moving costs more than it buys. Shoes go on before you stand, not after.
Outdoors
Move to open ground away from buildings, glass frontage, parapets and power lines, then drop and cover your head. The perimeter of a building is where the debris lands.
In a vehicle
Pull over clear of bridges, overpasses, tunnels, signs and power lines, stop, and stay in the vehicle with the handbrake on. When it stops, drive on carefully and expect damaged road, closed routes and downed cables.
On the trail or in camp
Drop and protect your head. Move away from cliff bases, steep gullies, talus and boulder fields — rockfall is the main killer in the mountains, and it continues after the shaking stops. In a tent, stay in it and cover your head: poles and fabric will not crush you, but leaving into the dark will. Keep clear of dead standing timber. Once it stops, look uphill before you move, and cross exposed ground one person at a time.
Near the coast
If the shaking is strong, or lasts more than about 20 seconds, treat it as the tsunami warning itself. As soon as it stops, move inland or to high ground on foot — do not wait for an official alert and do not collect belongings. Aim for at least 30 m elevation or 3 km inland. Water withdrawing from the shore, or a roar from the sea, means the wave is minutes away. Stay high for hours: the first wave is rarely the largest.
Advice that will get you hurt.
Stand in a doorway
Advice from an era of unreinforced adobe, where the frame was the only strong element. In a modern building it offers no protection and leaves you exposed to swinging doors and flying debris.
Run outside immediately
The exterior is where glass, cladding and parapets land.
The triangle of life — lie beside furniture, not under it
Rejected by USGS, FEMA and the Red Cross. It is drawn from pancake collapses of unreinforced concrete and does not transfer to buildings that do not fail that way.
Small quakes release pressure and prevent big ones
Energy scales logarithmically. It takes roughly 32 M5s to release the energy of one M6, and about a million M4s to release one M8.
Earthquake weather is a thing
No statistical link exists. Quakes originate kilometres below any weather.
It is not over when the shaking stops.
The rate decays roughly as 1/time under Omori's law: day 10 runs at about 10% of day one, and day 100 at about 1%. Sequences continue for months.
Immediately after any quake there is roughly a 5% chance it is followed by something larger nearby within the week — meaning what you felt was a foreshock. That chance falls away quickly if nothing else happens.
Expect roughly one aftershock a magnitude unit below the mainshock, and about ten an additional unit below that.
A large aftershock is more dangerous than its magnitude suggests, because it hits structures the mainshock already weakened.
The USGS publishes a modelled aftershock forecast on significant event pages.
The earthquake kit.
Packed once, stored where you can still reach it if the house cannot be entered.
Loading items…
Three things no other kit needs.
Shoes and gloves live beside the bed, not in the kit. The kit itself goes on a garage shelf or in an outdoor bin, not a back closet, because the house may not be enterable. And it includes a wrench or shut-off tool sized to your own gas meter, plus N95 masks for concrete dust.
Earthquake relief,and the years after it.
Give cash, not goods. Unsolicited shipments clog the ports and airstrips responders need, and cost more to sort than they are worth. Cash lets local organisations buy what is actually short, locally.
The first weeks: search and rescue, medical supplies, shelter and water.
IFRC — national society directory
The most direct route to a responder already working in your country.
Direct Relief
Medical supplies to local clinics and hospitals in the affected area.
GlobalGiving — disaster response funds
Pools donations and routes them to vetted local organisations.
Rebuilding runs for years after the cameras leave.
Check the organisation before the money leaves your account.
DisclaimerThese links go to third-party organisations. Field Atlas takes no cut and can't process donations. Verify each organisation, and how your money is used, before you give.