Abstract
Prephotographic depictions of earthquakes can contain important information on the types and amount of damage due to a large earthquake in historic times. Care must be used in evaluating such depictions because some are more accurate than others, and many depictions contain little that is of value in making estimates of seismic intensity. Depictions of two earthquakes, in 1692 at Jamaica and in 1843 at Guadeloupe, illustrate the utility of depictions in intensity estimation. A depiction of the scene at Port Royal in Jamaica of the 1692 shock suggests that the major damage was caused by soil slumping and a tsunami, with the ground shaking itself probably only having been about MMI VII. Two depictions of Pointe-à-Pitre at Guadeloupe after the 1843 event contain evidence that the town was damaged by strong ground shaking as well as by major soil failures. The ground shaking here was probably MMI VII–IX. These and other pictures are being assembled for a monograph of prephotographic earthquake depictions in the Americas.
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Kozák, J., Ebel, J.E. Macroseismic information from historic pictorial sources. PAGEOPH 146, 103–111 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00876671
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00876671