Follow-up New Yorker article: "How to Stay Safe.."

Posted by: Dagny

Follow-up New Yorker article: "How to Stay Safe.." - 07/29/15 08:54 PM

The author of the New Yorker article on the Cascadia Subduction Zone a couple weeks ago which garnered so much coverage, has now written an article about preparedness.


http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/how-to-stay-safe-when-the-big-one-comes


"...Novelists and screenwriters can terrify people, feel pretty good about themselves, and call it a day. But for journalists, or at least this one, fear is not an end in itself. At best, it is a means to an end, a way to channel emotion into action. To achieve that, however, you need to navigate between the twin obstacles of panic (which makes you do all the wrong things) and fatalism (which makes you do nothing). In an effort to help people to do so, I’ve answered, below, some of the questions I’ve heard most often since the story was published, and also provided a little advice about how best to prepare for the Cascadia earthquake and tsunami, and their aftermath."



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Posted by: Russ

Re: Follow-up New Yorker article: "How to Stay Safe.." - 07/29/15 09:15 PM

Thanks Dagny, excellent follow-up.
Posted by: Jeanette_Isabelle

Re: Follow-up New Yorker article: "How to Stay Safe.." - 07/30/15 12:10 AM

I like his philosophy:

My own theory about earthquake preparedness is that the perfect is the enemy of the good: don’t choose to stock nothing because you can’t stock everything. Got money and space to spare? Great: fill a shelf with water and nonperishable foods. Throw in duct tape and a tool kit. Throw in a hand-cranked radio, a water purifier, iodine. Don’t have much money or space? Make a small kit with whatever you can fit and afford. Everything you have, you’ll use; everything you can do for yourself frees up emergency resources for those in even greater need.

Jeanette Isabelle
Posted by: AKSAR

Re: Follow-up New Yorker article: "How to Stay Safe.." - 07/30/15 02:26 AM

That is an excellent follow up to the first article, thanks for posting the link.

There is a big regional exercise planned for 2016 called "Cascadia Rising".
Quote:
Conducting successful life-saving and life-sustaining response operations in the aftermath of a Cascadia Subduction Zone disaster will hinge on the effective coordination and integration of governments at all levels – cities, counties, state agencies, federal officials, the military, tribal nations – as well as non-government organizations and the private sector. One of the primary goals of Cascadia Rising is to train and test this whole community approach to complex disaster operations together as a joint team.

The culminating event will be a four-day functional exercise to occur June 7-10, 2016. Emergency Operations and Coordination Centers (EOC/ECCs) at all levels of government and the private sector will activate to coordinate simulated field response operations both within their jurisdictions and also with neighboring communities, state EOCs, FEMA, and major military commands.


A particularly interesting document is the EXERCISE SCENARIO DOCUMENT (a PDF), which lays out in considerable detail what might be expected in terms of damage. What infrastructure and facilities might survive intact, and what is likely to be severely damaged or destroyed. It provides a lot of educated guesses about what will happen when "The Really Big One" hits.
Posted by: JeffMc

Re: Follow-up New Yorker article: "How to Stay Safe.." - 07/30/15 05:25 AM

In addition to strapping in water heaters, earthquake valves that automatically shut off the gas supply in response to earthquakes over about R5 are a fairly inexpensive and highly useful safety upgrade. They can be easily reset by the homeowner after inspecting gas lines and appliances for any leaks or damage.
Posted by: Dagny

Re: Follow-up New Yorker article: "How to Stay Safe.." - 07/30/15 04:17 PM

Originally Posted By: AKSAR
A particularly interesting document is the EXERCISE SCENARIO DOCUMENT (a PDF), which lays out in considerable detail what might be expected in terms of damage. What infrastructure and facilities might survive intact, and what is likely to be severely damaged or destroyed. It provides a lot of educated guesses about what will happen when "The Really Big One" hits.



AKSAR - thanks for that link. I've just begun reading it and even the methodology is interesting. This quote jumps out:

"...the fragility curves for tall buildings are not well under- stood for prolonged shaking (4-6 minutes)...."



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Posted by: Jeanette_Isabelle

Re: Follow-up New Yorker article: "How to Stay Safe.." - 08/13/15 08:37 PM

This article suddenly became more relevant now that Mom's researching the threat of a tsunami hitting the east coast, including Florida. We live approximately twenty-five miles inland; Florida is relatively flat. If the wave is a few hundred feet high, what is there to stop it?

Jeanette Isabelle
Posted by: CJK

Re: Follow-up New Yorker article: "How to Stay Safe.." - 08/13/15 08:41 PM

Originally Posted By: Jeanette_Isabelle
This article suddenly became more relevant now that Mom's researching the threat of a tsunami hitting the east coast, including Florida. We live approximately twenty-five miles inland; Florida is relatively flat. If the wave is a few hundred feet high, what is there to stop it?

Jeanette Isabelle


What is there to stop it? Texas.
Posted by: AKSAR

Re: Follow-up New Yorker article: "How to Stay Safe.." - 08/13/15 09:12 PM

Originally Posted By: CJK
Originally Posted By: Jeanette_Isabelle
This article suddenly became more relevant now that Mom's researching the threat of a tsunami hitting the east coast, including Florida. We live approximately twenty-five miles inland; Florida is relatively flat. If the wave is a few hundred feet high, what is there to stop it?

Jeanette Isabelle
What is there to stop it? Texas.

I think J.I. is referring to the possibility of a tsunami from the Atlantic side of Florida. While region around the Atlantic is generally much less prone to major earthquakes and tsunamis than the Pacific "Ring of Fire", they do happen there. Just much less frequently. The two most often cited are the 1755 Lisbon earthquake and tsunami (on the other side of the pond), and the 1929 Magnitude 7.2 "Grand Banks" earthquake and tsunami.
Quote:
Approximately 2 1/2 hours after the earthquake the tsunami struck the southern end of the Burin Peninsula in Newfoundland as three main pulses, causing local sea levels to rise between 2 and 7 metres. At the heads of several of the long narrow bays on the Burin Peninsula the momentum of the tsunami carried water as high as 13 metres. This giant sea wave claimed a total of 28 lives - 27 drowned on the Burin peninsula and a young girl never recovered from her injuries and died in 1933.

However, I suspect that being 25 miles inland, J.I. probably doesn't need to worry too much about tsunamis. Like any wave, tsunamis tend to dissipate and lose energy as they move over land. My guess would be that it would run out of gas before it reached her.
Posted by: benjammin

Re: Follow-up New Yorker article: "How to Stay Safe.." - 08/14/15 11:16 AM

I believe the big concern in the Atlantic was a volcano in the Canary islands sloughing off. The last model I saw had the entire Florida peninsula inundated by the resulting Tsunami. I would expect anything south of Jacksonville to be scoured into the Gulf of Mexico based on that. The model indicated that enough erosion would occur that the peninsula would remain underwater indefinitely.
Posted by: AKSAR

Re: Follow-up New Yorker article: "How to Stay Safe.." - 08/14/15 03:45 PM

Ben is referring to the "mega tsunami" hypothesis, where a giant landslide could theoretically generate an immense wave. There are several reasons to doubt this idea.

In order to generate such a giant wave, the landslide would have to behave as a single coherent block. However, actual landslides don't tend to happen that way. While there is evidence that blocks have slumped off of the Canary Islands in the past, they seem to have broken as a series of subunits, which do not generate tsunamies on anywhere near the scale of a "mega tsunami".

Also note that a mega tsunami of that scale would leave a deposit as evidence. All that stuff scored off of Florida would get dumped elsewhere. Such deposits HAVE NOT been found from previous slumps of the Canary Islands.

See Killing off the Canary Islands mega tsunami scare for more info.
Posted by: Roarmeister

Re: Follow-up New Yorker article: "How to Stay Safe.." - 08/14/15 07:38 PM

I remember watching that documentary of the Canary Island created tsunami. It isn't implausible.

It has happened before but it is rare: Hawaii has sloughed off huge landslides in the prehistoric past that have left evidence all over the Pacific.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilina_Slump https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilina_Slumphttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilina_Slump

However, the mega-tsunami and super-volcano or all the mega-disaster terms that have been coined in the last few years have served little more than rattle the imagination along with metor/comet hits and have captivated movie audiences. The chances of these events happening in mine or yours lifetime are extremely low.

I'd worry more about the "run of the mill" hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, floods and earthquakes. smile I say that with a bit of cheese...
Posted by: benjammin

Re: Follow-up New Yorker article: "How to Stay Safe.." - 08/20/15 06:51 PM

Yeah, low likelihood, big damage, interesting analysis, about like any other mega-disaster theory looming these days. Could happen anytime, maybe tomorrow, but maybe not in another 100 to 10,000 years. Sorta like the stories about Mag 9 earthquakes, supervolcanoes, asteroid impacts etc...

Don't know how you can prep for any of these type of events. Like my wife's favorite counter-argument, "you never know..."

Everybody gotta die sometime.
Posted by: Phaedrus

Re: Follow-up New Yorker article: "How to Stay Safe.." - 08/21/15 07:01 AM

I'm pretty sure that prehistoric Britain was scoured by a landslide-generated Mega Tsunami. I agree that it's impossible to be prepared for everything. I think it makes sense to devote most of one's resources- personally and as a society- to the most likely and/or serious threats. Let's face it- if the Yellowstone Caldera explodes in a full force eruption there's not much we can do. That would be a very challenging event for humans a species, much less individual people. [While the media likes to talk about how "overdue" such an explosion is the fact remains that the best geological evidence points to decreasing activity over the millenia- ie. it may not be overdue so much as just slowing in activity.] On the other hand, earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes/typhoons are much more regular occurrences. Add to this list tornadoes, flood and blizzards and you're getting down to the things that we really should be preparing for.
Posted by: hikermor

Re: Follow-up New Yorker article: "How to Stay Safe.." - 08/21/15 03:06 PM

If you live in coastal environment (as I do) you must consider tsunamis in your disaster plans, because they are coming, tsuner or later.
Posted by: AKSAR

Re: Follow-up New Yorker article: "How to Stay Safe.." - 08/21/15 06:32 PM

Originally Posted By: hikermor
If you live in coastal environment (as I do) you must consider tsunamis in your disaster plans, because they are coming, tsuner or later.

The last few years I've noticed a surge of concern about tsunamis on the west coast, accompanied by a veritable flood of new information on how to escape them.
Posted by: hikermor

Re: Follow-up New Yorker article: "How to Stay Safe.." - 08/22/15 04:33 AM

Indeed, we have recently been inundated - up to our necks, as it were, by tsunami warning signs. But there is no escaping - in my part of town, as soon as you have attained enough elevation to be reasonably safe from the big T, you are in an officially designated "earthquake hazard zone" with all its problems, including liquifaction.

Yet, despite all this, the Washington post proclaimed my county (Ventura) as the most desirable place to live in the continental US, excluding Alaska and Hawaii (which have plenty of nice spots as well).