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Date / Time: 5/3/2008 8:02 PM UTC

May 3, 2008 Show on Earthquake Preparedness

Today, due to the recent rash of earthquakes throughout the US and around the world, we're going to discuss earthquake preparedness.

But first we'll begin with the news:

Associated Press

Washington, DC - President Bush urged Congress Thursday to approve $770 million to help alleviate dramatically escalating food prices that threaten widespread hunger and increasing social unrest around the world.

The new money comes on top of $200 million Bush ordered released two weeks ago for emergency food aid. It also is in addition to a pending $350 million request for emergency food aid funds. Because the new funds are part of a 2009 budget, they wouldn't be available for distribution until the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1, even if they are approved sooner.

http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2008May01/0,4670,BushFood,00.html

Associated Press

Kabul, Afghanistan - Hungry Afghans looking for their next meal eye bread scraps piled up like heaps of trash at a Kabul market as a vendor weighs out fistfuls of the stale crusts on a scale. A Pashtun woman waits with an empty plastic sack.

She isn't scavenging _ she's paying for leftovers that in better times were sold for feeding to sheep and cows. The woman said her household of 14 people had to give up fresh bread a month ago as the price spiraled out of reach.

http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2008May02/0,4670,AfghanFoodCrisis,00.html

And in the midst of all these food crisis’ and starvation this is the “Burns my ass story of the week:”

Fox News

Washington, DC - Just weeks before it announced the onset of a global food crisis and the urgent need for donors to provide at least $775 million in additional funding, the World Food Program was sitting on a cash and near-cash stockpile of more than $1.22 billion.

The startling figure is contained in the latest audited statements of the WFP, which were endorsed by the WFP’s executive director, Josette Sheeran, on March 31, just a month before Sheeran announced at an international aid conference on April 22 that a "silent tsunami" in rising food prices demanded the huge infusion of cash for the WFP’s latest budget.

The $1.22 billion figure, tallied as of Dec. 31, represents an increase of nearly $400 million over the WFP’s cash reserves a year earlier, as laid out in a report to the WFP’s governing executive board in June 2007.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,353944,00.html

Recently there have been a worldwide rash of earthquakes and here in the United States we’ve started off with a stormy Spring heading into Summer as we cover these stories:

Associated Press

Siloam Springs, AR - Eight Arkansans were killed Friday in thunderstorms that tore up parts of four states, while two dozen or more were injured. Forecasters said that, across middle America, more than 25 tornadoes may have touched down late Thursday and early Friday.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,353947,00.html

Associated Press

Santiago, Chile - Hundreds of people fled remote villages in southern Chile on Friday after a snowcapped volcano erupted, sending minor earthquakes rippling through the region.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,354029,00.html

Associated Press

Tehran, Iran - An earthquake hit western Iran Thursday, causing minor injuries to more than 100 people, state TV reported.

The report said the magnitude 4.7 quake jolted three towns in Lorestan province at 4:45 a.m., but no one was seriously hurt or required hospitalization.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,353764,00.html

Associated Press

Washington, DC - The USGS reports that a quake, with a preliminary magnitude of 6.6, was located 40 miles west of Adak, Alaska at a depth of 6.2 miles. It gave the location as 1,225 west south west of Anchorage in the Andreanof Islands. The quake struck at 4:33 p.m. local time.

http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2008May02/0,4670,AleutiansEarthquake,00.html

Associated Press

Palm Springs, CA - A moderate earthquake has shaken an area near Palm Springs, California.

The U.S. Geological Survey says the 4.2-magnitude quake struck at 8:55 p.m. Wednesday, about 27 miles south of Palm Springs. USGS geophysicist Randy Baldwin says the quake was felt from the Palm Springs area to the El Centro area near the Mexican border, more than 100 miles from the epicenter.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,353578,00.html

Associated Press

Bakersfield, CA - A moderate earthquake shook a mountainous area of California early Thursday, just hours after a quake some 230 miles to the southeast.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,353597,00.html

Associated Press

Willow Creek, CA - A moderate earthquake hit a mountainous region of Northern California on Tuesday night. There are no immediate reports or injury or damage.

A magnitude 5.2 temblor struck at 8:03 p.m., centered about 11 miles southeast of the town of Willow Creek in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,353299,00.html

Associated Press

Reno, NV - Scientists at the University of Nevada, Reno are scrutinizing seismic readings and studying damage at residents' homes to try to figure out what's happening beneath the earth's surface under a northwest Reno neighborhood rocked by a seemingly endless string of earthquakes.

Scientists are calling the swarm of temblors that began Feb. 28 the "Mogul earthquake sequence", in reference to the neighborhood where hundreds of mostly minor earthquakes have occurred.

But the shaking is unusual, seismologists say, because the intensity of the quakes has increased over the past few weeks. Generally, earthquakes tend to occur and are followed by smaller aftershocks.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,353319,00.html

Associated Press

Reno, NV - Scientists urged residents of northern Nevada's largest city to prepare for a bigger event as the area continued rumbling Saturday after the largest earthquake in a two-month-long series of temblors.

More than 100 aftershocks were recorded on the western edge of the city after a magnitude 4.7 quake hit Friday night, the strongest quake around Reno since one measuring 5.2 in 1953, said researchers at the seismological laboratory at the University of Nevada, Reno.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,352744,00.html

In addition to general earthquake preparedness you should also consider Flood & Flashflood Preparedness, Landslide, Mudslide, Sinkhole & Avalanche Preparedness, Volcano Preparedness, Tsunami Preparedness if you're on the coast, Home Fire Preparedness and even Hazardous Materials Preparedness. Why all of these for an earthquake?

Because all of these things could happen if there is a bad earthquake.

You need to identify the potential hazards now and prepare to mitigate the damage to your home and the danger to your family.

So where do we start?

What is an earthquake? An earthquake is the ground shaking caused by a sudden slip on a fault. Stresses in the earth's outer layer push the sides of the fault together. Stress builds up and the rocks slips suddenly, releasing energy in waves that travel through the earth's crust and cause the shaking that we feel during an earthquake. An earthquake occurs when plates grind and scrape against each other.

Look at it this way, an earthquake is kind of like what happens when you snap your fingers. Before the snap, you push your fingers together and sideways. Because you are pushing them together, friction keeps them from moving to the side. When you push sideways hard enough to overcome this friction, your fingers move suddenly, releasing energy in the form of sound waves that set the air vibrating and travel from your hand to your ear, where you hear the snap.

The same process goes on in an earthquake. Stresses in the earth's outer layer push the side of the fault together. The friction across the surface of the fault holds the rocks together so they do not slip immediately when pushed sideways. Eventually enough stress builds up and the rocks slip suddenly, releasing energy in waves that travel through the rock to cause the shaking that we feel during an earthquake.

Aftershocks are earthquakes that usually occur near the mainshock. The stress on the mainshock's fault changes during the mainshock and most of the aftershocks occur on the same fault. Sometimes the change in stress is great enough to trigger aftershocks on nearby faults as well.

What is a fault? A fault is a thin zone of crushed rock separating blocks of the earth's crust. When an earthquake occurs on one of these faults, the rock on one side of the fault slips with respect to the other. Faults can be centimeters to thousands of kilometers (fractions of an inch to thousands of miles) long. The fault surface can be vertical, horizontal, or at some angle to the surface of the earth. Faults can extend deep into the earth and may or may not extend up to the earth's surface.

Can the “big one” really happen? Theoretically, yes but realistically, no. The magnitude of an earthquake is related to the length of the fault on which it occurs -- the longer the fault, the larger the earthquake. The San Andreas Fault is only 800 miles long. To generate an earthquake of 10.5 magnitude would require the rupture of a fault that is many times the length of the San Andreas Fault. No fault long enough to generate a magnitude 10.5 earthquake is known to exist. The largest earthquake ever recorded was a magnitude 9.5 on May 22, 1960 in Chile on a fault that is almost 1,000 miles long.

Earthquakes can strike any location at any time. But history shows they occur in the same general patterns over time, principally in three large zones of the earth. The world's greatest earthquake zone, the circum-Pacific seismic belt, is found along the rim of the Pacific Ocean, where about 81 percent of the world's largest earthquakes occur. That belt extends from Chile, northward along the South American coast through Central America, Mexico, the West Coast of the United States, the southern part of Alaska, through the Aleutian Islands to Japan, the Philippine Islands, New Guinea, the island groups of the Southwest Pacific, and to New Zealand. The second important belt, the Alpide, extends from Java to Sumatra through the Himalayas, the Mediterranean, and out into the Atlantic. This belt accounts for about 17 percent of the world's largest earthquakes, including some of the most destructive. The third prominent belt follows the submerged mid-Atlantic ridge. The remaining shocks are scattered in various areas of the world. Earthquakes in these prominent seismic zones are taken for granted, but damaging shocks occur occasionally outside these areas. Examples in the United States are New Madrid, Missouri, and Charleston, South Carolina. Many decades to centuries, however, usually elapse between such destructive shocks.

Alaska registers the most earthquakes in a given year, with California placing second. California, however, has the most damaging earthquakes because of its greater population and extensive infrastructure. Most of Alaska’s large earthquakes occur in remote locations such as along the Aleutian Island chain. Florida and North Dakota have the fewest earthquakes each year.

That doesn’t mean that California is slated to just fall into the ocean. The ocean is not a great hole into which California can fall, but it is itself land at a somewhat lower elevation with water above it. It’s absolutely impossible that California will be swept out to sea. Instead, southwestern California is moving horizontally northward towards Alaska as it slides past central and eastern California. The dividing point is the San Andreas fault system, which extends from the Salton Sea in the south to Cape Mendocino in the north. This 800 mile long fault is the boundary between the Pacific Plate and North American Plate. The Pacific Plate is moving to the northwest with respect to the North American Plate at approximately 46 millimeters (two inches) per year (the rate your fingernails grow). At this rate, Los Angeles and San Francisco will one day (about 15 million years from now) be next-door neighbors, and in an additional 70 million years, Los Angeles residents will find themselves with an Alaska zip code!

Earthquakes induced by human activity have been documented in a few locations in the United States, Japan, and Canada. The cause was injection of fluids into deep wells for waste disposal and secondary recovery of oil, and the filling of large reservoirs for water supplies. Most of these earthquakes were minor. Deep mining can cause small to moderate quakes and nuclear testing has caused small earthquakes in the immediate area surrounding the test site, but other human activities have not been shown to trigger subsequent earthquakes. Earthquakes are part of a global tectonic process that generally occurs well beyond the influence or control of humans. The focus (point of origin) of an earthquake is typically tens to hundreds of miles underground, and the scale and force necessary to produce earthquakes are well beyond our daily lives.

Scientists agree that even large nuclear explosions have little effect on seismicity outside the area of the blast itself. The largest underground thermonuclear tests conducted by the United States were detonated in Amchitka at the western end of the Aleutian Islands, and the largest of these was the 5 megaton test code-named Cannikin that occurred on November 6, 1971 that did not trigger any earthquakes in the seismically active Aleutian Islands. On January 19, 1968, a thermonuclear test, code-named Faultless, took place in central Nevada. The code-name turned out to be a poor choice because a fresh fault rupture some 4,000 feet long was produced. Seismograph records showed that the seismic waves produced by the fault movement were much less energetic than those produced directly by the nuclear explosion. Locally, there were some minor earthquakes surrounding the blasts that released small amounts of energy. Scientists looked at the rate of earthquake occurrence in northern California, not far from the test site, at the times of the tests and found nothing to connect the testing with earthquakes in the area.

Many people believe that earthquakes are more common in certain kinds of weather. In fact, no correlation with weather has been found. Earthquakes begin many kilometers (miles) below the region affected by surface weather. People tend to notice earthquakes that fit the pattern and forget the ones that don't. Also, every region of the world has a story about earthquake weather, but the type of weather is whatever they had for their most memorable earthquake.

The greatest risk in an earthquake is the severity of the shaking it causes to manmade and natural structures and the contents within these that may fail or fall and injure or kill people. There have been large earthquakes with very little damage because they caused little shaking and/or buildings were built to withstand that shaking. In other cases, smaller earthquakes have caused great shaking and/or buildings collapsed that were never designed or built to survive shaking. Much depends on two variables: geology and engineering. From place to place, there are great differences in the geology at and below the ground surface. Different kinds of geology will do different things in earthquakes. For example, shaking at a site with soft sediments can last 3 times as long as shaking at a stable bedrock site such as one composed of granite. Local soil conditions also play a role, as certain soils greatly amplify the shaking in an earthquake. Seismic waves travel at different speeds in different types of rocks. Passing from rock to soil, the waves slow down but get bigger. A soft, loose soil will shake more intensely than hard rock at the same distance from the same earthquake. The looser and thicker the soil is, the greater the energy movement will be. Fires are another major risk during earthquakes as gas lines may be damaged and particularly hazardous.

Earthquakes strike suddenly, violently and without warning. Identifying potential hazards ahead of time and advance planning can reduce the dangers of serious injury or loss of life from an earthquake.

We cannot prevent earthquakes from happening (or stop them once they’ve started). However, we can significantly mitigate their effects by characterizing the hazard (e.g., identifying earthquake faults, unconsolidated sediment likely to amplify earthquake waves, and unstable land prone to sliding or liquefying during strong shaking), building safer structures, and preparing in advance by taking preventative measures and knowing how to respond.

Check for hazards in the home.

• Fasten shelves securely to walls.
• Place large or heavy objects on lower shelves.
• Store breakable items such as bottled foods, glass, and china in low, closed cabinets with latches.
• Hang heavy items such as pictures and mirrors away from beds, couches, and anywhere people sit.
• Brace overhead light fixtures.
• Repair defective electrical wiring and leaky gas connections. These are potential fire risks.
• Secure a water heater by strapping it to the wall studs and bolting it to the floor.
• Repair any deep cracks in ceilings or foundations. Get expert advice if there are signs of structural defects.
• Store weed killers, pesticides, and flammable products securely in closed cabinets with latches and on bottom shelves.

Identify safe places in each room.

• Under sturdy furniture such as a heavy desk or table.
• Against an inside wall.
• Away from where glass could shatter around windows, mirrors, pictures, or where heavy bookcases or other heavy furniture could fall over.
• Locate safe places outdoors. In the open, away from buildings, trees, telephone and electrical lines, overpasses, or elevated expressways.

Make sure all family members know how to respond after an earthquake.

Teach all family members how and when to turn off gas, electricity, and water.

Teach children how and when to call 9-1-1, police, or fire department and which radio station to tune to for emergency information.

Contact your local emergency management office or American Red Cross chapter for more information on earthquakes.

Have disaster supplies on hand.

Develop an emergency communication plan.

In case family members are separated from one another during an earthquake (a real possibility during the day when adults are at work and children are at school), develop a plan for reuniting after the disaster.

Ask an out-of-state relative or friend to serve as the "family contact." After a disaster, it's often easier to call long distance. Make sure everyone in the family knows the name, address, and phone number of the contact person.

If indoors:

If outdoors:

If in a moving vehicle:

Pets after an Earthquake

Be prepared for aftershocks. Although smaller than the main shock, aftershocks cause additional damage and may bring weakened structures down. Aftershocks can occur in the first hours, days, weeks, or even months after the quake.

Help injured or trapped persons. Give first aid where appropriate. Do not move seriously injured persons unless they are in immediate danger of further injury. Call for help.

Listen to a battery-operated radio or television for the latest emergency information.

Remember to help your neighbors who may require special assistance--infants, the elderly, and people with disabilities.

Stay out of damaged buildings. Return home only when authorities say it is safe.

Check for gas leaks - If you smell gas or hear blowing or hissing noise, open a window and quickly leave the building. Turn off the gas at the outside main valve if you can and call the gas company from a neighbor's home. If you turn off the gas for any reason, it must be turned back on by a professional.

Look for electrical system damage - If you see sparks or broken or frayed wires, or if you smell hot insulation, turn off the electricity at the main fuse box or circuit breaker. If you have to step in water to get to the fuse box or circuit breaker, call an electrician first for advice.

Check for sewage and water lines damage - If you suspect sewage lines are damaged, avoid using the toilets and call a plumber. If water pipes are damaged, contact the water company and avoid using water from the tap. You can obtain safe water by melting ice cubes.

So the safest bet to preparing for earthquakes and the dangers that can accompany them is to prepare now, before it happens and know what to do during and after.

This is all under your own control.

Remember, fear conscripts its own armies and takes its own prisoners.

Valuable Links:

NorthStar Preparedness Network

US Geological Survery Earthquake Facts

USGS Earthquake Map

Putting Down Roots in Earthquake Country (booklet)

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