Earthquakes may cause landslips to dam rivers, which collapse and cause floods.The terrain below the Sarez Lake in Tajikistan is in danger of catastrophic flooding if the landslide dam formed by the earthquake, known as the Usoi Dam, were to fail during a future earthquake. Impact projections suggest the flood could affect roughly 5 million people. Major earthquakes
One of the most devastating earthquakes in recorded history was the 1556 Shaanxi earthquake, which occurred on 23 January 1556 in Shaanxi, China. More than 830,000 people died. Most houses in the area were yaodongs—dwellings carved out of loess hillsides—and many victims were killed when these structures collapsed. The 1976 Tangshan earthquake, which killed between 240,000 and 655,000 people, was the deadliest of the 20th century.The 1960 Chilean earthquake is the largest earthquake that has been measured on a seismograph, reaching 9.5 magnitude on 22 May 1960. Its epicenter was near Cañete, Chile. The energy released was approximately twice that of the next most powerful earthquake, the Good Friday earthquake (27 March 1964), which was centered in Prince William Sound, Alaska. The ten largest recorded earthquakes have all been megathrust earthquakes; however, of these ten, only the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake is simultaneously one of the deadliest earthquakes in history. Earthquakes that caused the greatest loss of life, while powerful, were deadly because of their proximity to either heavily populated areas or the ocean, where earthquakes often create tsunamis that can devastate communities thousands of kilometers away.
The differences in travel time from the epicenter to the observatory are a measure of the distance and can be used to image both sources of earthquakes and structures within the Earth. Also, the depth of the hypocenter can be computed roughly. P-wave speed
Upper crust soils and unconsolidated sediments: 2–3 km (1.2–1.9 mi) per second
Upper crust solid rock: 3–6 km (1.9–3.7 mi) per second
Lower crust: 6–7 km (3.7–4.3 mi) per second
Deep mantle: 13 km (8.1 mi) per second. S-waves speed
Light sediments: 2–3 km (1.2–1.9 mi) per second in
Earths crust:4–5 km (2.5–3.1 mi) per second
Deep mantle: 7 km (4.3 mi) per second

Seismic wave arrival
As a consequence, the first waves of a distant earthquake arrive at an observatory via the Earths mantle. On average, the kilometer distance to the earthquake is the number of seconds between the P- and S-wave times 8. Slight deviations are caused by inhomogeneities of subsurface structure. By such analysis of seismograms, the Earths core was located in 1913 by Beno Gutenberg. S-waves and later arriving surface waves do most of the damage compared to P-waves. P-waves squeeze and expand the material in the same direction they are traveling, whereas S-waves shake the ground up and down and back and forth. Earthquake location and reporting
Earthquakes are not only categorized by their magnitude but also by the place where they occur. The world is divided into 754 Flinn–Engdahl regions (F-E regions), which are based on political and geographical boundaries as well as seismic activity.