Royal - HKU Libraries - The University of Hong Kong

The shock occurring yesterday afternoon appears to have donesome slight damage to property. St. John's Cathedral, weunderstand, was badly shaken, but the damage done was slight.The following day, the China Mail noted that whileHong Kong had escaped serious damage, Swatow had not.Under the headline 'Great Disaster at Swatow' the newspaperreported:The earthquake felt in the Colony on Wednesday had its centrefurther up the coast whence the reports yet to hand go to showthat it has taken the form of a great disaster.Unfortunately at Swatow something in the nature of acataclysm occurred in that city on Wednesday last ...practically every house in the native quarter of the town isdemolished and the European quarter has also sufferedsufficiently badly as to probably render it necessary to rebuildmost if not all the houses.On Saturday 16 February, the China Mail devoted itsleading article to a discussion of the history of earthquakes inChina, concluding with this comment:.,. South China, we believe, has never been visited before bysuch an earthquake as that just experienced at Swatow ...seismologists who have placed South China outside theearthquake zone have evidently a lot to learn on the subjectyet.The Royal Observatory operates a network of instrumentsto monitor earth tremors:Short period seismographs monitoring earthquakes forthe Regional Seismological Network for Southeast Asia;Long period seismographs as part of the WorldwideStandardised Seismograph Network.Seismographs are instruments used to measure and recordearth movements. A seismograph consists of a seismometer,an amplifier, recorder and timing system. The seismometerdetects the relative motion between a free mass - whichtends to remain at rest - and a frame which moves with theearth. This motion is converted into an electric currentwhich is amplified and recorded as a seismogram.116