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September 13, 2005
paranoia blogging
In early 2001 FEMA issued a list of the three likeliest and deadliest disasters that could befall the U.S.
In order:
1) A terrorist attack on New York (check)
2) A massive hurricane hitting downtown New Orleans (check)
3) A severe earthquake in San Francisco ( ... )
In short, as San Francisco residents we are doomed.
Were I a more proactive individual, I would take advantage of this height of risk awareness to devise some foolproof Road Warrior-style survival plan. Being myself, however, it is far more natural for me to dwell on the nature and scope of our latent ruin.
For example: How certain my death if I am on the Bart or the Caltrain when the Big One strikes? Is the Mission District particularly susceptible to liquefaction? Is it a good thing to live in a new building--because it was theoretically subject to sounder regulation--or does newness merely indicate that the building has yet to be quake-tested? Or worse, that it is built on some patch of yielding soil that in 1906 was responsible for the collapse of twenty city blocks, thus necessitating their being re-built into the relatively new neighborhood we see today?
And online I look at maps.
Here is a plain map of San Francisco:
I have compared it to the following map, which details the intensity of shaking in the 1906 earthquake (7.9):
And I have also looked at the "interactive liquefaction susceptibility" map on this site.
The prognosis? It doesn't look good. According to the "shake map" my location is squarely in an area that withstood "violent" shaking during the 1906 earthquake. While I suppose this isn't necessarily a harbinger of a repetition of the same, I would wager that the topography hasn't changed too much since then--and moreover I'm inclined to believe that the epicenter is of peripheral importance when examining the hazard in the Mission District versus, for example, that of the Haight. I look forward, then, to the "violent" shaking.
The "liquefaction susceptibility" map is a little more ambiguous as to our chances of being sucked into the liquid soil. Comparing it to the plain San Francisco street map it seems that my location is very close to an unlikely frontier zone at which Very High, Moderate, and Very Low meet. I could easily fall into any of those three zones. My cursory attempts to find detailed geological maps of underlying soil have yielded no fruit.
I did, however, find this interactive earthquake site on National Geographic. It includes a feature that allows you to start an earthquake of a given magnitude and see what it does to a building resting on a given soil type. I also watched a before-and-after video medley on the 1906 earthquake.
And here are some pictures taken on Howard St. after the quake:
In this instance, paranoia is probably justified. But it's my guess that it will pass, and the Big One will come only after a complacency has settled in. By then, though, we may all be living on Mars, and then we won't care about earthquakes in San Francisco.
Posted by onion slayer at September 13, 2005 04:18 PM
Comments
Remember the non-Richter earthquake scales that were in our geology text? Like the one that measured earthquakes by observable phenomena, where level five was marked by plates crashing and people running out of their houses (something like that)? By those standards, we could, techincally, create our own earthquake right now by smashing our coffee mugs against the wall and running out of our offices.
Also, while you are in emergency prepardedness/ paranoianess mode, you should check this out. You can model in real time what a zombie infestation of the city would be like. You have to be prepared.
Posted by: Hissy Cat at September 14, 2005 11:39 AM
and by "this" I mean this
Posted by: Hissycat at September 14, 2005 11:42 AM