Pacific Standard March-April 2013 Cover

Will California Build an Earthquake Warning System?

March 27, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
A Santa Monica apartment building destroyed by the Northridge earthquake in 1994 (PHOTO: SPIRIT OF AMERICA/SHUTTERSTOCK)

On March 27, 1964, a 9.2 megathrust earthquake rocked Alaska. It was the most powerful earthquake to ever hit the United States and 143 people lost their lives. The earthquake lasted almost four dreadful minutes as office buildings in Anchorage folded in on themselves and homes tumbled down cliffs. No one saw it coming. Just as no one could predict Monday's 6.2 earthquake in Guatemala (which thankfully didn't cause any serious damage). There's no surefire way to predict when an earthquake will strike (and some experts feel that as a practical matter the push for prediction should be ... Read More

More like this: Time Machine
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Killer Quakes Are Coming; Let’s Build Accordingly

February 20, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
The twisted remains of a building in Port-au-Prince after the earthquake in Haiti in 2010 (PHOTO: ARINDAMBANERJEE/SHUTTERSTOCK)

There will be blood, according to U.S. Geological Survey scientists: As the world population grows we can expect more individual earthquakes that kill lots of people and as a result see more individuals die from quakes than ever before. Engineering geologists Thomas L. Holzer and geophysicist James Savage, writing in the new issue of the journal Earthquake Spectra, predict the 21st century will see 21 quakes with a death toll of 50,000 or greater (plus or minus four), with nine of those killing more than 100,000. In the century just passed, there were seven quakes that killed at least ... Read More

More like this: The 101
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We’re Shaking it Up—Earthquakes Rattle Southern California

August 8, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Feeling shaky today in Southern California: At a news conference Wednesday morning, Kate Hutton of the U.S. Geological Survey at Caltech said there had been at least 30 quakes since last night, but only three could be felt by residents. "This is all part of the same earthquake sequence; they're all in the same area,'' Hutton told reporters at the briefing, which was televised by several TV stations. Experts said more aftershocks are likely. ... Read More

More like this: The 101
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Disaster Resilience Part of Sustainability, Too

April 10, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

As eco-savvy as the earthquake-prone Left Coast might be, it's probably safe to bet that going green won't be the first thing to come to mind when the Big One hits Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, or San Francisco. Nevertheless, green-building advocates and disaster planners are finding common ground as they try to convince cost-conscious building owners that keeping a building operational after a punishing quake or other disaster makes economic and environmental sense. Developers and architects already earn green-building kudos for outfitting structures with solar panels and ... Read More

More like this: Environment
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Easter Earthquake Pointed Out Some Faults

March 9, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Last month, Rex Dalton told us about a major earthquake in Baja Mexico that in addition to killing two people had the unfortunate local consequence of sealing off a traditional fishing spot that sustains the Cucapá Indian community. In “Quake Rescues Reserve, Shakes Baja Fishing Town,” he noted that aftereffects of the 7.2-magnitude Easter 2010 earthquake pleased conservationists as much as it annoyed the subsistence fishermen, and for exactly the same reasons. In the pleased column now add seismologists. The U.S. Geological Survey just announced that the El Mayor-Cucapah quake ... Read More

More like this: By The Way ..., Environment
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Christchurch Still Shaken By Quake One Year Later

February 21, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

When Don Mathias, a self-employed machinist and welder in Christchurch, New Zealand, saw a four-ton lathe leaping across the floor of his workshop, he knew this was no ordinary earthquake. “Everything jumped up in the air,” said the 53-year-old. “It was like being charged by a bull. When I saw that lathe moving I thought, ‘Nowhere’s safe in this building. I’ve got to get out.’” With more debris raining down from the mezzanine floor above, he staggered through the door and ran down an alleyway … and straight into a flight of stairs that weren’t there two minutes ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics
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EarthScope: A Seismic Shift in Data Gathering

February 7, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Earthscope: What Lies Beneath

On Feb. 7, 1812, a magnitude 7.7 earthquake pummeled the Mississippi River town of New Madrid. The quake, which was then the largest in U.S. history, was the fourth temblor to hit the region in a three-month span, and newspapers reported that people as far away as New York and Charleston, S.C. felt the vibrations. In one account, the shaking centered in the Louisiana Territory, about 150 miles south of St. Louis, caused bells to toll out of turn in Boston. Even though hundreds of smaller quakes occur annually in the New Madrid Seismic Zone, scientists are at a loss to explain when and how ... Read More

More like this: Science
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Oklahoma Earthquakes and the Wages of Fracking

November 9, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

When towns to the east of Oklahoma City jiggled over the weekend with two of the state’s strongest-ever earthquakes, some people asked an obvious question: Does the recent expansion of “fracking” for natural gas in Oklahoma — shooting water and chemicals and sand into shale deposits to free trapped methane — account for the trembling ground? Maybe. Oil and gas exploration has caused minor earthquakes in the U.S. since the ’30s, and a new report from Britain suggests that fracking itself can cause small quakes. It was “highly probable,” according to the report, that a ... Read More

More like this: Environment, European Dispatch
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Japan’s Earthquake: Deciphering the Fury

March 25, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

The events that have afflicted Japan since the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami of March 11 are all too well known, but the events that occurred before and the even more ominous events that may occur in the near future are less known. With the help of seismologist Chen Ji from the University of California, Santa Barbara, Curiouser & Curiouser host Jai Ranganathan explains the plate tectonics underlying the enormously powerful earthquake, how that crustal shift generated a deadly tsunami, and why that release of pent-up fury may presage even greater violence in the future, and not ... Read More

More like this: Curiouser
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Nuclear Disasters: Do Plans Trump Actions?

March 17, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

As Japan’s natural disaster has unfolded into a worst-case-scenario nuclear crisis over the past week, countries around the world have turned inward toward their own nuclear policies. Germany has temporarily shut down all of its plants built before 1980. Switzerland has suspended the approval process for three new ones. The European Union is testing all 143 reactors on the continent for earthquake and flood risk, age and ability to counter meltdowns. And China, which has some of the world’s most ambitious nuclear energy plans, announced Wednesday that it will suspend its program. So ... Read More

More like this: Politics, The Idea Lobby
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