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Tangshan Earthquake
The 1976 Tangshan earthquake, also known as the Great Tangshan earthquake, was a natural disaster resulting from a magnitude 7.6 earthquake that hit the region around Tangshan, Hebei, People's Republic of China on July 28, 1976, at 3:42 in the morning.
Earthquakes occur on faults. A fault is a thin zone of crushed rock separating blocks of the earth's crust. When an earthquake occurs on one of these faults, the rock on one side of the fault slips with respect to the other.
The Tangshan earthquake occurred along a previously unknown fault, now called the Tangshan Fault, in the Cangdong fault system near that system’s intersection with the Yin Shan–Yan Shan mountain belt. The earthquake was generated by a 25-mile long Tangshan fault, which runs near the city and ruptured due to tectonic forces caused by the Amurian Plate sliding past the Eurasian Plate.
Additional websites:
Plate tectonics and earthquakes
Disaster history
The deadliest earthquake
Tangshan Earthquake of 1976
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