Posted on 04/04/2018 8:24:32 AM PDT by C19fan
New York City could be hit with a $39 billion in damage with 30 million tons of debris clogging the streets if a long-overdue earthquake hit.
The city of 8.5 million people is not thought of as a tremor hot spot, but the five boroughs are riddled with fault lines that could bring dozens of buildings down.
Because the city is so dense and littered with thousands of tall buildings, even a 5.0 magnitude earthquake nearby would cause such damage, experts fear.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
yeah, but think of the destruction if Laz hit it!
Do you know anything about the Richter Scale? A 5.0 earthquake is not that strong. Since 1900 there have seen sixteen temblors in and around Los Angeles rating 4.9 or greater. There has been extensive damage in areas and some loss of life resulting from those quakes but nothing like what’s described in this report.
Its not the new buildings that would fall. Yes, Manhattan is literally screwed into Bedrock. But that doesn’t always mean earthquake-safe. Screwed in also means brittle and brittle is not where you want to be when things start shaking.
The brick and concrete facades falling into the canyons that are the streets of NYC would be horrifying for anyone below.
Look at the damage the little shaker caused Washington DC a few years ago. Since the scale is logarithmic, a 5 would be ten times worse.
My guess is that no one would want to be walking across the Brooklyn Bridge when that hits.
It might be granite, but it’s not solid.
“There are several fault lines in the metro area, including one along Manhattan’s 125th St. - which may have generated two small tremors in 1981 and may have been the source of the major 1737 earthquake, says Armbruster. There’s another fault line on Dyckman St. and one in Dobbs Ferry in nearby Westchester County.”
Doesn’t matter what kind of ‘bedrock’ the buildings are founded in. If the structures are not engineered/built to stand the seismic energy they will come down. Only thing good bedrock does is transmit the seismic force more effectively.
There is a huge difference between earthquakes in the northeast than a similar sized one in So Cal.
The underlying ground in So Cal is not as rigid as it is in NY. Manhattan is built on pretty solid bedrock. BUT, the ground between the surface and the bedrock is pretty much glacial sand. That is going to turn fluid in an earthquake. That buildings that are more than a few decades old are not built for that stuff.
When you get into the other boroughs, there are more buildings sitting on dirt with no bedrocks. They will fall apart.
One of the areas that is most at risk is the infrastructure. The bridges and raised trains will not withstand that much shaking. They are not built to the earthquake standards of LA.
Finally, the cities in the entire NE corridor is build literally on top of each other. If there is a 5.0 in NYC, the impact is going to be felt in NJ, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and DC.
Can you imagine the shitshow if those cities are just a little damaged.
A 5.0 in NYC is more like a high 6 or 7 in LA.
...women, LGBTABCEDEFs, and minorities most affected, of course.
I just assumed they were already doing that.
;-)
;-)
bookmark
The Louisa County earthquake in 2011 was magnitude 5.8.
The epicenter was only about 75 miles from DC, so the effective magnitude in DC was considerably more than a 4.
Look up the statistics on the 1971 quake in Los Angeles. It was more than 5.0
I’m sure there are private companies willing to sell insurance against this risk.
Is earthquake insurance sold in those areas, as it is in California?
San Francisco is living on borrowed time.
I can’t imagine anyone would want to invest in real estate in that area.
A big part of that city is going to fall into the ocean very soon.
I recommend you read up eastern US earthquakes. They are quite different from those on the west coast, due primarily to differences in the depth and relative age of underlying bedrock.
The rock in the east is older than that in the west and is less able to absorb the energy from an earthquake. Thus, a 5.0 in the east will generally cause a lot more damage than the same magnitude on the west coast.
Horse hockey. I sat through a 5.6 in CA and it barely shook the hotel.
Shortly thereafter I was not the only guest in the bar wearing their pajamas.
What would happen if Godzilla went on a rampage through New York?
Roland Emmerich tried that in his horrible Godzilla”.
And why an earthquake north of Quebec was felt as far away as Virginia, or the 2011 4.5 southern Virginia earthquake did so much damage in Washington DC.
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