and other events that they can trigger such as tsunami, landslides and even volcanic activity. Some earthquake events and sequences can even come part of popular culture or at least personal and collective psychology, e.g. Pompei, the 1755 Lisbon earthquakes and tsunami and the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake in Japan, activated a tsunami with 30-foot waves and led to nearly 18,729 deaths and 2666 missing (Henderson, 2013; Fukui & Ohe, 2019), with footage of the tsunami being broadcast live around the world. Similarly, footage of the Indian Ocean Boxing Day (26 December) tsunami of 2004 that followed from the 9.1 (Mw) earthquake off the coast of the Indonesian Island of Sumatra that killed at least 225,000 people across several countries bordering the Indian Ocean including India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand reminds us of the destructive nature of earthquakes and their impacts on humans, society and countries (Moeller, 2006; Mäntyniemi, 2012; Bonati, 2015).
Earthquake events and their impacts are clearly often devasting for the communities and people that are affected. From a tourism perspective this means members of the host community, visiting tourists, tourism businesses, destination infrastructure as well as destination and business image. Although it may seem trite to be discussing tourism in the context of earthquakes and disasters it needs to be remembered that tourism is economically important for many earthquake affected locations. If they lose tourism, they lose jobs and the economic capacity to rebuild, including damaged infrastructure, heritage and facilities that are used by the local population as well as visitors (Huan et al., 2004; Mendoza et al., 2012; Tang, 2014). To understand how tourism and tourists are affected by earthquakes is then essential to being able to build more resilient places, economies, businesses and destinations, and to be proactive with respect to being able to better help people when disaster does come (Huang & Min, 2002; Orchiston, 2013; Ghmire, 2016; Hall et al., 2016).
The majority of earthquakes that people experience are fault earthquakes. Fault earthquakes happen when two earth blocks suddenly slip past one another, with the surface where the slip occurs known as the fault or fault plane (USGS, 2019). The main earthquake is called the mainshock and this is usually followed by a number of aftershocks, which may continue for weeks, months or even years after the main earthquake event or mainshock (USGS, 2019). Four different types of faults have been identified that explain the sudden ‘jerky’ feeling experienced during an earthquake. According to GNS Science, New Zealand (2019), the four types of faults are: normal (move up and down), reverse (thrust), strike slip (move left and right or vice versa) and oblique slip (various combinations of the previously described movements). Along with the different types of fault earthquakes, volcanic related earthquakes are also significant. These are caused by the movement of magma beneath the Earth’s surface which can lead to earthquake swarms as well as more violent earthquakes. Such earthquake activity is often an indicator of potential eruptions, as in the case of Mount St Helens (Foxworthy & Hill, 1982) or Mount Etna (Martini & Platania, this volume)
Unlike many other types of disasters, earthquakes have the capacity to generate other deadly disasters other than those arising from ground shaking, liquefaction, building collapse and falling masonry, including tsunamis and landslides, as well as those arising from their effects on chemical, oil and nuclear facilities, such as nuclear meltdown in Fukushima as a result of a tsunami (Hasegawa, 2012; Rangel & Lévêque, 2014). Very often there is no early warning which makes it impossible to precisely anticipate the location and intensity of the earthquake (Tsai & Chen, 2010). Typically earthquakes are treated as acute events with relatively short periods of impact and response that transform in the recovery phase (Becker et al., 2019). However, this is somewhat misleading as not only may an earthquake sequence last for a considerable length of time, even years, as was the case of the Christchurch earthquakes in New Zealand. Similarly, the rebuild, insurance and psychological impacts of earthquakes can last for many years, as was also the case of the Christchurch earthquakes (Amore & Hall, 2016a, 2016b, 2017; Hall et al., 2016; Amore et al., 2017; Amore, this volume).
Disasters are human, environmental and economic tragedies (Rose, 2011). The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) (2015: 25) defines ‘disaster recovery in terms of livelihoods, health, economic, physical, social, cultural and environmental assets, systems and activities’. Earthquakes impact communities in different ways. In terms of the physical environment, earthquakes can cause changes in landform, vegetation and soils, and alterations of hydrological conditions (Migon & Pijet-Migon, 2019). Although subsequent natural processes themselves act towards erasing traces of natural disasters, human interventions can also speed up this process. The physical impacts depend on the hazard mitigation and emergency preparedness practices of the community (Russell et al., 1995; Geschwind, 2001). Both of these, can reduce the physical impacts (Lindell & Prater, 2003). However, they can also induce a number of social impacts that can last for years and decades. The greatest physical impacts relate often to the number of casualties and extent of damage to property and lifeline infrastructures. The extent of the physical impacts is often difficult to assess as casualties may be an indirect consequence of the mainshock or aftershocks. Losses of structures, animals and crops are also important measures of physical impacts (Lindell & Prater, 2003). As argued by Whitman et al. (2013), earthquakes have different impacts on rural and urban areas and studies tend to suggest that the latter recovers faster (Frazier et al., 2013; Cui et al., 2018). Earthquake damage to the built environment can be classified broadly as affecting residential, commercial, industrial, infrastructure or community services sectors (Lindell & Prater, 2003). One way to reduce the physical impacts is to adopt hazard mitigation practices such as avoiding or changing construction in areas that are susceptible to hazard impact. Building construction practices can also make structures less vulnerable (Palm, 1998; Godshalk 2003; Lindell & Prater, 2003; Sengezer & Koç, 2005).
Earthquakes can severely impact organizations in the form of direct physical damage to structures and property, inventory, non-structural damage to premises, changes in cash flow, halted or slowed production, changes in suppliers and customers, staff attrition and psychosocial effects on staff and family (Corey & Deitch, 2011; Whitman et al., 2013). Following the 2010/2011 Canterbury earthquakes, Brown et al. (2015) found that ‘customer issues’ impacts were the most disruptive for organizations. The disruption of critical services and organizational size work hand in hand with sector-specific organizational vulnerabilities to maximize negative impacts of disasters on organizations (Whitman et al., 2013). Thus, analysing the effects of earthquakes on organizations from a spatial, organizational characteristics and sectoral perspective is a necessary step in improving mitigation strategies that can better inform policy decisions, but also improve organization and community resilience (Whitman et al., 2014).
Earthquakes, Social Impacts and Well-being
The social impacts of disasters can take various forms and includes socio-demographic, socioeconomic, sociopolitical and psychosocial impacts (Lindell & Prater, 2003; Amini Hosseini et al., 2013; Potter et al., 2015; Van der Voort & Vanclay, 2015). One of the most significant socio-demographic impacts of an earthquake-related disaster on a community is the destruction of household dwellings (Mileti & Passerini, 1996). This causes direct economic losses that can be thought of as a loss in asset value but the emotional impacts of losing one’s dwelling can be even harder on individuals (Wu & Lindell, 2004; Yi & Yang, 2014; Tierney & Oliver-Smith, 2012). There is also evidence that disaster impacts can cause social activism resulting in political disruption, especially when disaster recovery seems to take longer than what the community anticipates and/or when some interests and groups are excluding from decision-making (Lindell & Prater, 2003; Hall et al., 2016; Amore et al., 2017), while earthquake recovery and rebuilding process can also be an opportunity for some interests to implement new political structures and advanced particular ideological agendas (Amore & Hall, 2016a, 2017).
Those affected by earthquake disasters often experience a significant decrease in quality of life. Psychosocial impacts are often manifested by psychophysiological effects such as fatigue and tics but also cognitive signs such as confusion, impaired concentration and attention
