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Anakin
[monger=ff0000,ffffff]Holonet Jedi Master[/monger]
Forum Administrator

Wait...why do you get to have all the fun?

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[monger=ff0000,ffff00]I'm from the Lou and I'm proud...[/monger]

Yup, I sure did; one came down smack behind my house early this summer. And do you think all the drills helped this lil ol Sithette?

Heck no! I just watched the wall of water and wind and tree branches blasting horizontally outside my window for a bit. OK, I'll admit: when the window began to bulge outward (lower pressure outside the house than inside) and I heard that rumble like the biggest and longest and most powerful train in the world passing just outside, I lit out for the basement...

And from the looks of the yard and that of my neighbor's in the wake of this thing, I now have a little closer understanding of the term, "disaster."

I know -- I survived it, and was one of the lucky ones -- the house is on fairly solid ground which doesn't magnify the shaking, so there was little damage. But the university I was attending -- Cal State, Northridge -- wasn't so lucky. A newly-built parking structure was destroyed and the library, which had just undergone expansion and renovation, was severely damaged. The remaining two years until graduation were spent in portable classrooms. And it was only recently that the library was fully reopened.

The moral of this little story is that you're never really prepared for an earthquake, and a scheduled drill is no help at all for a disaster that strikes without warning. Tornadoes, hurricanes and floods you can plan and prepare for, but an earthquake -- you really are on shakey ground....

You are right, Gouyen. You can never be fully prepared for something as terrifying as an earthquake. We still don't know how to realistically forecast them; I don't know if we ever will.

Tornadoes are a little bit easier to evade, although not by much. Doppler radar can give us better and better indications of where conditions are favorable for the formation of tornadoes, but it is not 100% reliable. Quite often a tornado will not appear when one thinks it ought to; at times, they may be missed altogether. I know the latter from personal experience; the one that hit my treeline (visually verified by a neighbor) was not shown on Doppler.

Hurricanes can be prepared for, and escape handily made for those wise enough to pay heed. However, there are low-laying areas as well as smaller island countries where escape is not often possible. Flooding is insidious, and the great dangers inherent to this are often ignored by people who think they are stronger than flowing water. (MISTAKE! People, what do you think carves out river valleys and erodes mountains into plains, hmmm???)

My point is that, I agree with you, Gouyen. Both our points, I believe, are directed toward Ani: an earthquake drill is not something to be excited about. Disasters happen, and lives are often lost whenever they strike. It's called, "Nature," and is the price we pay for living on a "living, breathing earth."

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Anakin
[monger=ff0000,ffffff]Holonet Jedi Master[/monger]
Forum Administrator

I've been in an earthquake but you couldn't tell...only the scales could really read it...

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[monger=ff0000,ffff00]I'm from the Lou and I'm proud...[/monger]

Are you aware that you live extremely close to the mid-continent New Madrid Fault Zone? This is what erupted in the worst earthquake in the history of the US (I think in 1812; I am bad with dates, and don't have my book handy.) This was a huge quake, registering 11 on the Mercalli Scale (highest is 12; it is a much more sensitive and detailed scale of earthquake intensity than the Richter Scale, which only goes to 10): there were three aftershocks that registered nearly 8 each! This quake was so bad it altered the course of the Mississippi, after first causing that river to actually change direction and flow upstream due to the seismic energies released. Ground rippled like waves in water.

If an earthquake on this scale should hit LA... *shudders*... it would make the Northridge quake seem like the mere wigglings of a bowl of jello.

Oh yes, not to make ya worried or anything... but the fault zone is very much NOT dead....

The good news is: mid-continent quakes generally take a long time to develop. Strain builds up as tectonic plates press against and dive beneath each other; this tension is released relatively quickly along the "shattered fringes" where immediate collision occurs(ie: San Andreas and other west coast faults). The pressure takes longer to travel inward and build up in the middle of the continent however, and as a result, the pressures are often much greater. Thus, these mid-continent earthquakes may not happen as often as the ones on the edges of the continent, but they are far more devastating.

Just FYI....

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Anakin
[monger=ff0000,ffffff]Holonet Jedi Master[/monger]
Forum Administrator

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[monger=ff0000,ffff00]I'm from the Lou and I'm proud...[/monger]

Bob, we really cannot predict when the next quake will hit the middle of the continental United States. We can go on an average; I believe this fault zone averages a major hit in the hundreds of years, versus the tens of years of fault zones at the continental fringes.

But it's kind of like estimating a 100-year flood, or a 500-year flood. What this means is that, statistically the chances of a flood as great as the 1993 Midwest debacle ever occurring again are about 1 in every 500 years. This does not mean that every 500 years we will be guaranteed of having a flood of that scope happening. Just that statistically, the odds say the chances are that somewhere within a 500-year span, a flood of that magnitude will occur.

This means we just might get another one again next year. Or the following year.

The same thing with the New Madrid fault zone. We can say that the statistical odds are that about once in every few hundred years an earthquake of the magnitude of the 1812 mid-continental quake will strike somewhere along the New Madrid fault. It does not mean that every, say two hundred years we are guaranteed that this will occur.

And really, now that I think about it, I believe the odds to be more along once every thousand years or so...

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Anakin
[monger=ff0000,ffffff]Holonet Jedi Master[/monger]
Forum Administrator