Causes

Our continents and oceans sit on the outer crust, and the outer crust is made up of tectonic plates. These plates move around all over the world and the plate boundaries is where problems start. Large amounts of faults lie on the boundaries, with most of the earthquakes that happen worldwide occur on these faults. On these plates the edges are very rough, and easily get stuck on other plates, the plates keep moving and eventually it becomes unstuck on the fault and the earthquake takes place (Wald, 2012).

Consequences

Earthquakes leave in their paths destruction, mass loss of life, serious damage to infrastructure and it may cost the city it hits millions or even billions of dollars to rebuild the city. The Japanese earthquake left 15,884 dead, and has cost the country into the tens of billions of dollars (Wikipedia, 2014).

The causes and consequences of earthquakes