the midwest is stealing west coast Shtick

Don Quixote

Don Quixote

cancer survivor
Contributor
[FONT=&quot]US Warns of Possible 'Catastrophic' Quake[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Nov. 20) – People in a vast seismic zone in the southern and midwestern United States would face catastrophic damage if a major earthquake struck there and should ensure that builders keep that risk in mind, a government report said on Thursday.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]The Federal Emergency Management Agency said if earthquakes strike in what geologists define as the New Madrid Seismic Zone, they would cause "the highest economic losses due to a natural disaster in the United States."[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]FEMA predicted a large earthquake would cause "widespread and catastrophic physical damage" across Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee -- home to some 44 million people.[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]Tennessee is likely to be hardest hit, according to the study that sought to gauge the impact of a 7.7 magnitude earthquake in order to guide the government's response.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]In Tennessee alone, it forecast hundreds of collapsed bridges, tens of thousands of severely damaged buildings and a half a million households without water.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Transportation systems and hospitals would be wrecked, and police and fire departments impaired, the study said.[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]The zone, named for the town of New Madrid in Missouri's southeast corner, is subject to frequent mild earthquakes.[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]Experts have long tried to predict the likelihood of a major quake like those that struck in 1811 and 1812. These shifted the course of the Mississippi River and rang church bells on the East Coast but caused few deaths amid a sparse population.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]"People who live in these areas and the people who build in these areas certainly need to take into better account that at some time there is ... expected to be a catastrophic earthquake in that area, and they'd better be prepared for it," said FEMA spokesperson Mary Margaret Walker.[/FONT]
 
Actually nothing dramatic about it. Long science.

403 Forbidden

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/states/events/1811-1812.php

New Madrid Earthquakes 1811-1812
New Madrid 1811-1812 Earthquakes


1811, December 16, 08:15 UTC. Northeast Arkansas
Magnitude ~7.2 - 8.1

On the basis of the large area of damage (600,000 square kilometers), the widespread area of perceptibility (5,000,000 square kilometers), and the complex physiographic changes that occurred, the Mississippi River valley earthquakes of 1811-1812 rank as some of the largest in the United States since its settlement by Europeans. The area of strong shaking associated with these shocks is two to three times larger than that of the 1964 Alaska earthquake and 10 times larger than that of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake...
Click to expand...
 
Kathianne said:
Right, all the country. Today.
Click to expand...

we cannot even get them to make our bridges safe for normal traffic

ca and or are retrofitting our bridges to meet earthquake standards created as a result of the northridge quake last decade

not even all of ca structures meet current earthquake standards - because it would be too expensive...:eek:
 
Why should we spend a huge amount building up to CA standards in a zone that is extremely unlikely to have an earthquake?

It would honestly be less expensive to just let half our buildings be destroyed ever two centuries than to build to CA standards for that same period of time. We've got other things to worry about - like hurricanes. Us building up for earthquakes would be like CA requiring building standards in preparation for those once in a century hurricane that blow in from the western Mexico hurricane areas.
 
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