Earthquakes near Kaifeng through history

It was also the deadliest: NOAA records 7,477 deaths for it. NOAA’s list of significant earthquakes has 5 here, back to AD 344. NOAA records deaths in 5 of the events here, 8,432 in all. The latest on NOAA’s list is a magnitude 5.3 on November 6, 1983 (E, Heze-Dongming, Shandong Province). NOAA’s record here begins in AD 344 with an earthquake (Henan Province).

• November 6, 1983Earthquake · M 5.3E, Heze-Dongming, Shandong Province · 34 deaths (NOAA)NOAA NCEI · Wikipedia
• July 31, 1937Earthquake · M 7.024 km W of Heze, China · 390 deaths (NOAA)USGS · NOAA NCEI
• June 12, 1830Earthquake · M 7.5 (est.)Hebei Province · 7,477 deaths (NOAA)NOAA NCEI
• AD 344EarthquakeHenan Province · 101 deaths (NOAA)NOAA NCEI

• An event counts for Kaifeng 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