State seismologist Michael West wrote that an earthquake’s magnitude is much less important than how close people are living to its epicenter.
“Alaskans often feel the distant rumbles of very large earthquakes, but that is nothing like the violent shaking that occurs close to the epicenter, even during earthquakes with unimpressive magnitudes,” West wrote in an opinion piece for Alaska Dispatch News last year.
There are several different types of waves associated with earthquakes and…
