Earthquakes near Ţarţūs through history

The deadliest was not the strongest: an estimated magnitude 7.5 on December 13, 115 (Antakya (Antioch)), for which NOAA records 260,000 deaths. NOAA’s list of significant earthquakes has 21 here, back to 2001 BCE. NOAA records deaths in 14 of the events here, 700,402 in all. The latest on NOAA’s list is a magnitude 5.8 on March 16, 1956 (Litani). NOAA’s record here begins in 2001 BCE with an earthquake (Ugarit). NOAA lists one tsunami that began within 100 km of Ţarţūs.

• March 16, 1956Earthquake · M 5.8Litani · 148 deaths (NOAA)NOAA NCEI · Wikipedia
• July 21, 1752TsunamiLatakiaNOAA NCEI
• May 20, 1202Earthquake · M 7.6 (est.)Southwestern · 30,000 deaths (NOAA)NOAA NCEI · Wikipedia
• December 13, 115Earthquake · M 7.5 (est.)Antakya (Antioch) · 260,000 deaths (NOAA)NOAA NCEI · Wikipedia
• 2001 BCEEarthquakeUgaritNOAA NCEI

• An event counts for Ţarţūs 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