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An earthquake registering 5.9 MW struck northern Afghanistan, triggering landslides that killed over 2,300 people and destroyed around 15,000 homes.
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February 1998 Afghanistan earthquake
1998 earthquake centered in northeastern Afghanistan
The February 1998 Afghanistan earthquake occurred at 19:03 local time near the Afghanistan-Tajikistan border. The strike-slip shock had a moment magnitude of 5.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe). With several thousand dead and hundreds injured, the event's…Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
Moment magnitude scale
Measure of earthquake size, in terms of the energy released
The moment magnitude scale is a measure of an earthquake's magnitude based on its seismic moment. Mw was defined in a 1979 paper by Thomas C. Hanks and Hiroo Kanamori. Similar to the local magnitude/Richter scale (ML ) defined by Charles Francis Richter in 1935, it uses a…Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
Landslide
Natural hazard involving ground movement
Landslides, also known as landslips, rockslips or rockslides, are several forms of mass wasting that may include a wide range of ground movements, such as rockfalls, mudflows, shallow or deep-seated slope failures and debris flows. Landslides occur in a variety of environments,…Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)