worlds highest-magnitude tremor in recent memory.the powerfull earthquake

In February 2009, a growing number of American and Chinese scientists suggested that the calamity was triggered by a four-year-old reservoir built close to the earthquake's geological fault line.A Columbia University scientist who studied the quake has said that it may have been triggered by the weight of 320 million tons of water in the Zipingpu Reservoir less than a mile from a well-known major fault. His conclusions, presented to the American Geophysical Union in December, coincide with a new finding by Chinese geophysicists that the dam caused significant seismic changes before the earthquake.The Jan. 12 earthquake that rocked the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince may not have been the highest-magnitude tremor in recent memory, but it certainly seemed the most cataclysmic. Within hours, more than a million people became homeless. Buildings across much of the city and its suburbs were reduced to rubble. Some 230,000 people died, and hundreds of thousands of others were injured. The international response was swift, with dozens of countries sending aid, rescue teams and military personnel to stabilize the situation. But the damage has been devastating and profound in what is one of the poorest countries in the western hemisphere. Tens of thousands remain in ramshackle tent cities that from the beginning have been short on or totally bereft of adequate provisions. Reports of rape are legion, and an epidemic of cholera has set in, killing more than 300 and leading to further calls for international relief. The hobbled Haitian government is unable to cope on its own — at times, outgoing President René Préval has seemed a bemused bystander, and it's unlikely that the results of upcoming elections can do much to change the bleak facts on the ground. On the afternoon of May 12, 2008, a 7.9-magnitude earthquake hit Sichuan Province, a mountainous region in Western China, killing about 70,000 people and leaving over 18,000 missing. Over 15 million people lived in the affected area, including almost 4 million in the city of Chengdu.Since the Tangshan earthquake in 1976, which killed over 240,000 people, China has required that new structures withstand major quakes. But the collapse of schools, hospitals and factories in several different areas around Sichuan has raised questions about how rigorously such codes have been enforced during China's recent, epic building boom.In June 2008, low-lying areas in one of the towns most devastated by the earthquake were flooded as a torrent of water was released from a dangerous lake formed by landslides, dislodging wrecked homes, cars and corpses.The surge of floodwater into the town, Beichuan, was part of an effort by engineers and soldiers to drain Tangjiashan, one of more than 30 so-called quake lakes that were formed by landslides. For weeks, the dam of rock and mud holding back the rising waters of the Jian River there had threatened to burst and flood towns and cities downstream that are home to 1.3 million people.Another smaller earthquake struck the region in August 2008, damaging 258,000 homes and killing at least 32 people.Thousands of the initial quake's victims were children crushed in shoddily built schools, inciting protests by parents. Local police harassed the protestors and the government criticized them. At least one human rights advocate who championed their cause was arrested.
The Chinese government has refused to release the number of students who died or their names. But one official report soon after the earthquake estimated that up to 10,000 students died in the collapse of 7,000 classrooms and dormitory rooms.Reports emerged in July 2008 that local governments in the province had begun a coordinated campaign to buy the silence of angry parents whose children died during the earthquake.Most parents whose children died took a payment from the local government and a guarantee of a pension in exchange for silence.In December 2008, government officials acknowledged in the most definitive report since the earthquake that many school buildings across the country are poorly constructed and that 20 percent of primary schools in one southwestern province may be unsafe.By the first anniversary of the quake, mothers across the region were pregnant or giving birth again, aided by government medical teams dispensing fertility advice and reversing sterilizations. Because of China's policy limiting most families to having one child, the students who died were often their parents' only offspring. Officials say they hope a wave of births will help defuse the anger that many grieving parents harbor.
But the wounds have festered, in part because the Chinese government, wary of any challenge to its authoritarian rule, has muffled the parents and quashed public discussion of shoddy school construction. As the anniversary of the quake again focused attention on Sichuan, the government intensified its campaign to silence the parents. resorting to harassment by police and threats of imprisonment.The Sichuan government has explicitly prohibited media organizations from reporting on miscarriages by women in temporary housing camps. Some quake survivors say they fear that the miscarriages may have been caused by high levels of formaldehyde in the prefabricated housing.