Earthquake Awareness Banner  What is an Earthquake?  Techtonic
MapAn earthquake is the sudden, sometimes violent, ground
shaking from the release of energy in the earth's crust.
Earthquakes typically occur with little or no warning.  The
risks that earthquakes pose to society, including death, injury,
and economic loss, can be greatly reduced by better planning,
construction, and mitigation practices before earthquakes
happen, and providing critical and timely information to improve
response after they occur.  Although earthquakes can occur
anywhere on earth, the majority of earthquakes worldwide occur
at plate boundaries. These earthquakes are known as interplate
earthquakes.  Alabama is located within the interior of the
North American plate, far from any plate boundary. Earthquakes
occuring within a plate are intraplate earthquakes. Little is
known as to why intraplate earthquakes occur. The most widely
accepted model is that several geologically old fault systems of
varying orientation within the subsurfa