How do earthquakes happen?

      How do earthquakes happen?

First: Earthquakes are caused when the tectonic plates rub together and then when they do one goes higher and the other one goes down.

When the earthquake starts it gives a very strong shake and then stuff started to drop and buildings fall and the ground splits open.

Then after the earthquake there are a lot of damage to property, roads are blocked and the government has to pay a lot of money to fix roads and other buildings.  

The latest earthquake in NZ was the one at Kaikoura. It had a lot of aftershocks and the richter scale for the earthquake was 7.5 so that was a big earthquake. The earthquake happened at night so lucky no one was out on the roads walking or in high buildings.   

The richter scale tells how big the earthquake will be like how they told how big the earthquake was in Kaikoura. The Kaikoura one was 7.5 so that was really big so that how the richter scale works.

What is the epicenter? The epicenter is the exact place where the earthquake originates.

 

What is a Tsunami? A Tsunami is caused by an earthquake when the earthquake starts a Tsunami comes, and big waves come. It floods everything; there was one Tsunami in Japan, it was very big and scary. It happened in March the 11 2011.