Earthquake hazard areas within the United States based on fault lines
Posted on 08/24/2011 1:49:27 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The earthquakes yesterday scared people along the East Coast, but the truly terrifying earthquake may strike the Midwest—and FEMA is preparing for it.
Early in the morning of May 16, while most of America was being titillated and transfixed by the appearance in court of the then-suspect Dominique Strauss-Kahn, an urgent message was suddenly received at the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in Washington, D.C
Reports were streaming in of a catastrophic earthquake, magnitude 7.7, that had struck the Midwest near the town of Marked Tree, Ark. First reports were alarming: phenomenal property damage; casualty figures were unprecedented; transportation links were severed; and cities like St. Louis, Memphis, Little Rock, and Cincinnati had been thrown into utter turmoil. Eight states were believed to have been directly affected, and it was thought the death toll would be in the thousands.
A gigantic federal relief mission swung into action. Nine thousand National Guardsmen were ordered to be deployed. Triage centers were opened in all the affected cities—a list that grew longer as a secondary magnitude 6.0 earthquake struck close to the city of Mt. Carmel, Ill. The Red Cross deployed emergency teams. Power companies were given priority to restore electricity and gas supplies. Heavy equipment was sent in to clear highways and railway tracks.
Within 72 hours some kind of order was restored. Hospitals found themselves more able to cope with the vast number of patients suffering injuries. Refugees fleeing in panic were being assembled into special camps. Temporary tent cities were set up along the main refugee routes.
It was all, of course, an exercise. Its name was NLE2011—a National Level Exercise run by planners at FEMA who were clearly very eager never to be caught wrong-footed again, as they had been after Hurricane Katrina, in 2005. But the exercise was itself somewhat disaster-prone, turning out to be spectacularly ill-timed—for at the very moment it began the country was occupied by the record floods along the Mississippi and then by the outbreak of tornadoes that climaxed with the near-total destruction of the city of Joplin, Mo. Emergency responders had their hands full with very real catastrophes, without having a Washington-created disaster of even greater magnitude added to their burden.
Yet the exercise was of vital importance—as the two somewhat smaller earthquakes yesterday have amply shown.
For the temblors that struck yesterday in the hitherto unknown hamlets of Trinidad, Colo., and, more significantly, in Mineral, Va., have served to remind the country of three abiding seismic truths. First, that earthquakes occurring east of the Rocky Mountains extend their effects over much greater distances than do the very much larger, but more contained quakes on the Pacific Coast. Second, that the population east of the Rocky Mountains has precious little idea of how to prepare for an earthquake, so seldom do large events occur in the region. Third, and most important, as FEMA would now be the first to point out, there is a very real potential for a truly disastrous earthquake to occur in the Midwest—and that when it comes it would most probably be in the very region chosen for the NLE2011 three-day quake-game—centered around the otherwise forgettable city of New Madrid, Mo.
For it has happened there before, big time. This year marks the bicentennial of the great swarm of earthquakes that afflicted New Madrid between December 1811 and February 1812—hundreds of them, day after day, but punctuated by four enormous ruptures, two occurring on Dec. 16, and one each on Jan. 23 and Feb. 7. These caused spectacular effects all across the then young, sparsely settled United States—toppling church steeples in South Carolina, ringing church bells in Boston, causing the Mississippi to reverse it course, and sinking numerous properties deep into the liquefied earths of the prairies.
The casualties from this string of over-magnitude 7.0 quakes—perhaps 7.5, which would approach the magnitude of the great San Francisco quake of 1906—were light, principally because in 1811 there were so few people in the region. But today is different. There are tens of millions close by—which is why FEMA, triggering its exercise-quake in an Arkansas town just a few miles from New Madrid, chose to send its stark warning to the cities of St. Louis, Memphis, Little Rock, and Cincinnati, all of which would most likely be severely affected should such a quake happen again.
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FEMA needs to fear defunding.
On average it’s every 400 years so it’s not like it imminent although it seems to get more attention than any other fault for some reason.
Ping.
Pretty darned close. If I were Berkland I'd say opposite corners of a butterfly strain field...
Translation into plain English:
It looks like the Colorado and Virgina 'quakes are located such as to suddenly increase the stress in the New Madrid fault.
New Madrid was the source of a series of the largest earthquakes ever recorded in the contiguous United States in 1811 and 1812.
A modern repeat would literally tear the heart out of America.
Whether anyone would view this as a gift from a munificent allah and respond accordingly is an exercise left to the reader...
Sure....we're the Socialist capital of the upper mid-west, but we have happy cows, cheese curds, the Packers, and no earthquakes!!!!
Life am goooooooD!
>> “A modern repeat would literally tear the heart out of America.” <<
.
In another 2000 years or so, maybe. Stress takes time to build up and it was released just 200 years ago.
Ø is checking with his REALLY BIG boss to see if it can be scheduled for 11/5/12. Wipe out enough red states and he still might have a chance. Even better he could find some liberal judge to extend the voting period a week and send in FEMA with bunches of premarked ballots to be ‘found.’
They share a common (close) latitude line, the 37th Parallel:
Cokedale, CO. 37.144
Mineral, VA. 37.48
New Madrid, MO 36.59
Also (FYI):
Honshu, Japan 37.67
Fukushima 37.57
San Francisco 37.46
i gotta kick outta the screwl principal on fox news
who during an aftershock ran out of the building on camera.
meanwhile, there were piles of bricks and building materials on the ground.
in the californicate one learns NOT to run out of a building during an earthquake.
Oh, yeah, that one around New Madrid will be the big one on the east coast. No doubt.
As for FEMA, I did a trade show in the building they are housed in in D.C. I was not impressed by the rank-and-file employees who sauntered (waddled?) back from lunch and stopped in to graze on the candy I had put out on the table.
Thanks for your posts null and void, Is it planned?
If I were running for president, FEMA would be on my “Kill list”.
Local civil defense people do fine and are far quicker to action with a minimal need for federal dollars.
Interesting....thank you.
I do not get to see the plans. Perhaps I can occasionally glimpse them through a glass darkly.
I’m told believers have a better view...
I always scratch my head at you guys who think FEMA is the second coming of the NKVD. Disaster response is one of the few constitutionally legit things the federal government does these days. There has been some sort of federal response to disasters since the George Washington administration. Competence is a different issue, but even there they have been becoming much more professional in recent years.
Yeah I really appreciate FEMA placing me in a flood zone that didn’t exist a few years ago so they can drain more money out my insurance company which is in turn charged to me.
Do not go to a FEMA camp. They will take your ID and cross reference you on their data base. Most FReepers will be on “The List” and you will be sent to a “Special Camp.”
BS. Have you ever been on a large scale disaster site? Locals are obviously best as first responders, but local and state never include set asides for really large scale responses when a disaster covers multiple municipalities counties and states. Not to mention ability to communacate and co-ordinate with the bajillion public and private organizations involved.
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