Report of the recent Humboldt County, California, earthquake. [Click] The person they spent the most time interviewing is new to the area, and evidently didn’t know what to do. [NO, YOU DON’T RUN OUT OF THE BUILDING!] Lots of things thrown off store shelves (or kept on by wires), but no reports of damaged houses or bridges, and little damage to roads. Since the earthquake was centered well offshore (as most of them are), onshore damage was far less than if it had been on land.
The Good Friday Earthquake was about magnitude 9.2, the Tohoku Earthquake 9.0. The Cascadia Fault is thought to be capable of producing magnitude 9.0+ earthquakes. The New Madrid earthquakes are estimated to have been in the 7.2 to 8.2 range.
Wikipedia: “Because of the logarithmic basis of the Richter scale, each whole number increase in magnitude represents a tenfold increase in measured amplitude. In terms of energy, each whole number increase corresponds to an increase of about 31.6 times the amount of energy released.” —Alan
Nah, no big; it's just part of living there. Really destructive earthquakes are very unlikely to come in a given person's lifetime, and it is possible to prepare in advance. [For instance, our grandfather clock is chained to the frame of the house.] That said, I wouldn't live along the coast of farthest north California, Oregon, Washington, or southern BC; the roads along and across the coastal mountains are sure to be wrecked when the Cascadia Fault breaks loose again, so no matter how well one's house is built or located, extended isolation is in the cards. Great earthquakes recur there about every 250 to 500 years on average as memory serves me, and the most recent one was in 1700. Expect the coast to fall by twenty feet or more, quickly followed by tsunami more than fifty or even sixty feet high in many places. Look at the coastline of southern Oregon and its extensive beaches (which attract multitudinous tourists); it seems obviously to have been shaped by tsunami over eons. Other places have volcanoes, hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, and/or ferocious lightning. ----Alan
P.S.: I very sincerely hope that school buildings close to the Cascadia Fault will have been made earthquake resistant before the next big one hits. In California school construction standards were greatly improved after the Long Beach quake of 1933; fortunately it happened on a Sunday, but people were shocked by the extensive failures of school buildings. No school built to even the earliest version of the subsequent school construction standards has ever failed in an earthquake, and from time to time the standards are improved. Many (most?) schools in Oregon and Washington are not built to comparable standards. I remember a story from the Tohoku earthquake: there was a multi-story school built not far from the coastline, and after the earthquake the principal realized there was no chance of getting the children to high ground before the tsunami hit, so he ordered everyone to evacuate to the roof. The outer (and inner partition) walls were built to give way in a tsunami to protect the frame of the structure, and worked just as intended. Not one person in the school was lost. ----Alan
P.P.S.: Recently I read a story from coastal Oregon or Washington. The local school is built within the tsunami inundation zone. A parcel of land above the inundation zone that was big enough for a new school became available for a reasonable price and the superintendent tried to arrange for at least the purchase, with the possibility of building a new school later, but voters in the school district voted it down. Damned fools. -----Alan
The History of how St. Nicholas became Santa Claus
ReplyDeleteIt was so much more meaningful before it became commercialised.
And let us not forget The Companions of Saint Nicholas [Click]
Delete—Alan
Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield calls off surgery anesthesia cap [Click]
ReplyDelete----Alan
Report of the recent Humboldt County, California, earthquake. [Click] The person they spent the most time interviewing is new to the area, and evidently didn’t know what to do. [NO, YOU DON’T RUN OUT OF THE BUILDING!] Lots of things thrown off store shelves (or kept on by wires), but no reports of damaged houses or bridges, and little damage to roads. Since the earthquake was centered well offshore (as most of them are), onshore damage was far less than if it had been on land.
ReplyDeleteThe Good Friday Earthquake was about magnitude 9.2, the Tohoku Earthquake 9.0. The Cascadia Fault is thought to be capable of producing magnitude 9.0+ earthquakes. The New Madrid earthquakes are estimated to have been in the 7.2 to 8.2 range.
Wikipedia: “Because of the logarithmic basis of the Richter scale, each whole number increase in magnitude represents a tenfold increase in measured amplitude. In terms of energy, each whole number increase corresponds to an increase of about 31.6 times the amount of energy released.”
—Alan
Sources of [California] North Coast Seismicity [Click] Figure 5 shows the town where I was born [Scotia] and where we lived [Briceland].
ReplyDeleteWow! You were in the thick of it. I bet you're glad you're in Frsno now.
DeleteNah, no big; it's just part of living there. Really destructive earthquakes are very unlikely to come in a given person's lifetime, and it is possible to prepare in advance. [For instance, our grandfather clock is chained to the frame of the house.] That said, I wouldn't live along the coast of farthest north California, Oregon, Washington, or southern BC; the roads along and across the coastal mountains are sure to be wrecked when the Cascadia Fault breaks loose again, so no matter how well one's house is built or located, extended isolation is in the cards. Great earthquakes recur there about every 250 to 500 years on average as memory serves me, and the most recent one was in 1700. Expect the coast to fall by twenty feet or more, quickly followed by tsunami more than fifty or even sixty feet high in many places. Look at the coastline of southern Oregon and its extensive beaches (which attract multitudinous tourists); it seems obviously to have been shaped by tsunami over eons. Other places have volcanoes, hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, and/or ferocious lightning.
Delete----Alan
P.S.: I very sincerely hope that school buildings close to the Cascadia Fault will have been made earthquake resistant before the next big one hits. In California school construction standards were greatly improved after the Long Beach quake of 1933; fortunately it happened on a Sunday, but people were shocked by the extensive failures of school buildings. No school built to even the earliest version of the subsequent school construction standards has ever failed in an earthquake, and from time to time the standards are improved. Many (most?) schools in Oregon and Washington are not built to comparable standards. I remember a story from the Tohoku earthquake: there was a multi-story school built not far from the coastline, and after the earthquake the principal realized there was no chance of getting the children to high ground before the tsunami hit, so he ordered everyone to evacuate to the roof. The outer (and inner partition) walls were built to give way in a tsunami to protect the frame of the structure, and worked just as intended. Not one person in the school was lost.
Delete----Alan
P.P.S.: Recently I read a story from coastal Oregon or Washington. The local school is built within the tsunami inundation zone. A parcel of land above the inundation zone that was big enough for a new school became available for a reasonable price and the superintendent tried to arrange for at least the purchase, with the possibility of building a new school later, but voters in the school district voted it down. Damned fools.
Delete-----Alan