Earthquakes near Gyumri through history

The deadliest was not the strongest: a magnitude 6.8 on December 7, 1988 (10 km N of Gogaran, Armenia), for which NOAA records 25,000 deaths. NOAA’s list of significant earthquakes has 21 here, back to AD 851. NOAA records deaths in 13 of the events here, 32,806 in all. The latest on NOAA’s list is a magnitude 7 on April 29, 1991 (22 km WNW of Java, Georgia). NOAA’s record here begins in AD 851 with an earthquake (Dvin). It grows thinner going back: 8 of the 21 significant earthquakes NOAA lists here are from 1927 on.

• April 29, 1991Earthquake · M 7.022 km WNW of Java, Georgia · 270 deaths (NOAA)USGS · NOAA NCEI · Wikipedia
• December 7, 1988Earthquake · M 6.810 km N of Gogaran, Armenia · 25,000 deaths (NOAA)USGS · NOAA NCEI · Wikipedia
• November 24, 1976Earthquake · M 7.3Muradiye · 5,000 deaths (NOAA)USGS · NOAA NCEI · Wikipedia
• AD 851Earthquake · M 5.2 (est.)DvinNOAA NCEI

• An event counts for Gyumri when it began within 100 km of its centre, or 200 km for an earthquake of magnitude 7 or more. Damage can reach further.
• USGS counts here start at magnitude 6: the catalogue’s smaller quakes thin out going back, where few instruments listened.
• NOAA lists significant events only: earthquakes that killed, did about $1 million of damage, reached magnitude 7.5 or intensity X, or raised a tsunami, and eruptions and tsunamis by like measures. Magnitudes before 1900 are its estimates from written accounts.
• Deaths are NOAA’s total for each event, wherever people died, its tsunami and fires included. A tsunami counts the dead its runup records give for this place: NOAA’s total for a tsunami includes its source quake’s.
• A tsunami from elsewhere counts where one of its runups killed or rose a metre or more.
• Counted to October 19, 2026, as is the map. The last 30 days ask USGS again.

How the layers work, where their data comes from and what they can’t tell you: Earthquakes, live, The world through history