Horrifying video from the streets of El Junquito, Venezuela shows buildings crumbling like matchsticks into clouds of choking brown smoke after a pair of violent earthquakes rattled the country.

The devastation from two massive earthquakes that struck Venezuela on Wednesday offers a stark warning for California and other seismically vulnerable areas of the toll catastrophic shaking can bring to urban areas.

This week's magnitude 7.8 earthquake in the Philippines came with scenes familiar to New Zealanders: collapsed buildings, shattered facades and streets strewn with rubble.

The imperative for such innovation in that field is massive. For instance, despite lasting only 20 seconds, the 1995 earthquake that struck Kobe, Japan destroyed 100,000 buildings, and the 2011 earthquake/tsunami that smashed Tōhoku, Japan killed more than 15,000 people and forced 130,000 to abandon their homes temporarily or permanently.

After the occurrences of large-scale earthquakes, secondary damage (e.g., fire following earthquake) can result in tremendous losses of life, properties, and buildings. To reduce these disaster risks, fire following earthquake assessment methods composed ...

More than 80 New York City buildings were inspected in the hours following the magnitude-4.8 earthquake that rippled through the five boroughs — followed by about 30 aftershocks through Saturday morning — as the city’s 311 system was inundated with ...