Earthquakes near Yixing through history

The deadliest was not the strongest: a magnitude 5.4 on July 9, 1979 (Jiangsu Province: Liyang), for which NOAA records 41 deaths. NOAA’s list of significant earthquakes has 5 here, back to AD 999. NOAA records deaths in 2 of the events here, 47 in all. NOAA’s record here begins in October 999 with an earthquake (Jiangsu Province: Changzhou).

• July 9, 1979Earthquake · M 5.4Jiangsu Province: Liyang · 41 deaths (NOAA)NOAA NCEI
• July 19, 1928Earthquake · M 5.8Sichuan Province · 6 deaths (NOAA)NOAA NCEI
• December 1, 1921Earthquake · M 6.620 km WNW of Zhicheng, ChinaUSGS
• October 999Earthquake · M 5.5 (est.)Jiangsu Province: ChangzhouNOAA NCEI

• An event counts for Yixing 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