Posted on 07/05/2011 11:38:02 AM PDT by MosesmomS
I live within the New Madrid fault zone, so when a "big one" hits we here in Southern Illinois pay close attention to the news. We all know that what we're watching could someday be us. The city of Christchurch, New Zealand, was hit on Feb. 22 by a 6.3-magnitude earthquake that was a deadly aftershock of an even larger quake that shook the country last September. Forces combined with the location of the epicenter of the quake, the terrain and the time of day to lay devastation and death upon the city...
(Excerpt) Read more at associatedcontent.com ...
I don’t know if anyone else noticed, but after the earthquake hit Christchurch, the MSM kept referring to it only as “a major city in New Zealand”. They wouldn’t refer to it as Christchurch, probably in fear of offending their muzzie overlords!
Depending on location of epicenter, StL may be affective to the point where one or more hospitals would be out of service. People should prepare for such an event. There is but one Level One Trauma Center up in Springfield. Next closest is StL. Think about it folks.
If Memphis is hard-hit, many, many casualties will ensue. All the old brick buildings will be on the ground. Bridges (very old) will be down. Transportation E-W across Miss. River will be affected greatly.
One of the things that California state government does right is the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development. The agency is responsible for ensuring that all health facilities in the state meet seismic and, as of this year, flood safety standards to they can survive a disaster.
The argument that local building inspections can handle this is void due to the facts of the 1971 Sylmar quake. 48 health care facilities in the Los Angeles area that were supposedly seismically souind were red tagged after the quake. A brand new Kaiser hospital saw a portion of one building FALL OVER with significant loss of life.
The problem with a substandard hospital is that the disaster not only renders the facility useless, the collapsing facility kills or injures your skilled medical personnel and then because they can’t treat patients then those patients die.
Any state that has floods, earthquakes, or tornadoes as a present threat needs such an agency to ensure their hospitals are there after a disaster.
Does it increase hospital building costs? Yes.
Do mortality rates after a disaster decline? Yes.
One of the things I’m afraid of with Obamacare is that it will trounce on seismic and flood standards to allow hospitals to be built with lax Federal approval like the VA hospital in LA where 49 people died in the 1971 quake because the building was shoddy and the local inspectors who’d approved it had been bribed.
Transportation E-W across Miss. River will be affected greatly.
How much would the course of the river be effected?
Just imagine the damage were it to shift from it’s
current bed.
Pickles was one of the dogs that worked Joplin.
The VAH in Memphis is due south of the town of New Madrid. Old. I doubt Memphis could take much of a hit. 7 would be horrid. If 8 or larger strikes? It’s over...
A big enough earthquake could make the Miss run e-w instead of n-s! Well, that may be an exaggeration, or is it? The Emerson Bridge at Cape Girardeau alone has approx. 12K vehicles per day. Although new, even if it survives, traffic patterns will be greatly changed after a major quake...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.