Earthquakes are vibrations and shakings of the Earth’s surface that leads to great damages. Earthquakes happen all over the world, occuring at different magnitudes, reason why an earthquake in China would be more powerful than the earthquake in Japan. Yet, there are places in the world having earthquake magnitudes so minute they can’t be felt. The reason to this would be discussed later.
SO WHATS THE CAUSE OF AN EARTHQUAKE?
Earthquakes occur when rock in the earth suddenly breaks along a faultline, thereby resulting in release of great energy causing strong seismic waves that are so strong it shakes the earth. Now what’s a FAULTLINE?
The portion of the Earth’s surface where tectonic plates meet is a faultline. So when these tectonic moves, Most likely pressing against each other, leads to the energy creation process,causing the faultlines, I.e the fault zone, to experience hazards, in this case, an earthquake.
Image credit: msnucleus.org
The image above shows the tectonic regions(plates) of Earth and their faultlines.
Now viewing from the image, taking the country Nigeria for example. Nigeria is a country in Africa and it has never recorded a devastating earthquake in history. This is the most probable reason why the country do not experience the faults of the earth as no faultline is close to the country, and it’s Continent is embedded in the middle of a tectonic plate. But although, the country South Africa experiences a small but noticeable earthquake, with this I’d like to enlighten that new fault lines are formed, in forms of cracks into these tectonic plates and also witness earthquakes. So the colliding of tectonic plates not only lead to instant earthquakes, but also the probable formation of new tectonic faults.
Source
Earthquake disasters
LIST OF PRIMARY TECTONIC PLATES OF THE WORLD
-African Plate.
-Antarctic Plate.
-Eurasian Plate.
-Indo-Australian Plate.
-North American Plate.
-Pacific Plate.
-South American Plate.
It is advisable for Civil Engineers and Structural Engineers to avoid building structures near or on fault lines, as the model would be due for destruction in a matter of years, months, or even days.