Earthquakes

We live in a litigious society. Engineering and environmental geologists are no strangers to the legal system. They frequently deal with issues relating to geologic hazards such as active faults and unstable ground, the release of contaminants into the environment and numerous other circumstances. But for the most part, geoscientists tend to avoid legal battles. Is that changing?

In Italy, seismologists who failed to predict the L’Aquila earthquake in 2009 could face manslaughter charges.

Move Port-au-Prince? Maybe. San Francisco and New Orleans? Never.

It is common for scientists to call for the relocation of a city to a safer location after it is struck by an earthquake or hurricane. After all, when many cities were built, the nature of the hazard they faced was either unknown or very poorly understood. This is true whether we’re talking about San Francisco, Calif., New Orleans, La., or Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Now that we know the hazards, is it time to relocate a city in a dangerous locale? Port-au-Prince? Yes. San Francisco and New Orleans? No.

The global financial disaster of 2009 has many parallels with catastrophic natural hazards. It struck pretty much without warning, its impact was greatly exacerbated by an incredibly complex system of cascading consequences, and finally, mechanisms supposedly in place to mitigate the worse impacts (regulations, in the case of the financial system) failed. There was awareness that such a meltdown could theoretically occur, but it was considered such a low-probability event that it was evidently not worth planning for.

A nuclear accident is defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as an incident in which people died or property damage topped $50,000. In 1990, IAEA introduced the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) to rate and rank nuclear accidents. INES is a logarithmic scale that consists of seven levels: 0 (Deviation, no safety significance), 1 (Anomaly), 2 (Incident), 3 (Serious incident), 4 (Accident with local consequences), 5 (Accident with wider consequences), 6 (Serious accident) and 7 (Major accident).

In the hours (not days) after the enormous earthquake hit Japan on March 11, before it was even known that the Fukushima power plant had been badly disabled and well before the scope of the mortality and damage had been assessed, the Japanese yen rapidly appreciated in value. The G7 nations moved to quickly stabilize the yen — not to prevent it from falling, but to prevent it from further appreciating.

A magnitude-6.3 earthquake struck Christchurch, New Zealand, at about 1 p.m. local time Tuesday. The quake killed at least 65 people and buried 100 more in rubble. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) reports that the quake was an aftershock of an earthquake that hit the region last September.

This year is the 200th anniversary of the New Madrid quakes, the series of magnitude-7 to -8 earthquakes that rocked parts of Missouri and Arkansas in the winter of 1811-1812. But even 200 years later, the quakes continue to shake things up. And the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is taking precautions — or maybe not.

During the winter of 1811-1812, three strong earthquakes between magnitude 7 and 8 rocked the New Madrid seismic zone, which runs through parts of eastern Missouri and northeastern Arkansas. The quakes opened deep fissures, destroyed forests and lakes, and produced intense ground shaking that liquefied the soil, turning the land to the consistency of jelly across an area of 10,000 square kilometers.

Updated on Oct. 28, 2010:

The death toll has continued to rise from the natural disasters that struck Indonesia Monday and Tuesday. Currently, officials are reporting 343 people dead with 338 still missing from the earthquake and tsunami. Meanwhile, the eruption of Mount Merapi has killed 33 so far; after a brief lull, the eruption began again on Thursday.

Data collected by a unique array of instruments located near the epicenter of the magnitude-7.2 earthquake that struck Baja California April 4 are providing scientists with new insight into the phenomenon of liquefaction, a potentially dangerous side effect of major earthquakes.

News out of Italy suggests that seven researchers who did not predict the L’Aquila earthquake in April 2009 are under formal investigation and may be charged with gross negligent manslaughter.

Guatemala's Pacaya volcano and Ecuador’s Tungurahua vociferously erupted on Thursday, wreaking havoc on villages and cities nearby.

A saltwater disposal well, a part of the natural gas production process, may have been responsible for triggering a series of minor earthquakes in the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas in 2008, according to a recent study.

Update:

In 2008, it was the Longmen Shan Fault, a 250-kilometer long thrust fault that divides the 6,500-meter-high Tibetan Plateau from the lower Sichuan basin, which ruptured. However, today's series of quakes occurred several hundred kilometers to the northwest, in the eastern Tibetan Plateau, and were the result of strike-slip faulting, according to USGS.

A magnitude-7.2 earthquake struck northern Baja California, Mexico, at about 3:40 p.m. local time Sunday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. At least two people were killed, several hundred were injured and thousands were without power as a result of the quake. Aftershocks as high as magnitude 5.0 have continued to rattle the region today.

A magnitude-6.0 earthquake struck eastern Turkey at 4:32 a.m. local time Monday. The quake was centered in Elazig province about 625 kilometers east of Turkey’s capital, Ankara. The earthquake toppled buildings, flattened homes, injured at least 100 people and killed 57, according to the Associated Press.

Since 1939, a progression of deadly earthquakes has been marching westward across Turkey’s North Anatolian Fault, stalking the mega-city Istanbul. Just over a decade ago, a magnitude-7.4 quake struck near Izmit, 100 kilometers east of Istanbul, killing 18,000 people. All signs point to Istanbul as the next likely target. But a new study suggests Turkey’s largest city may be struck by a series of moderate earthquakes, rather than one big event.

At any given time, a massive earthquake could strike the coast of the northwestern United States and southwestern Canada, the site of the Cascadia Subduction Zone. Scientists have long known about the potential earthquake threat to major population centers like Portland, Ore., Seattle, Wash., and Vancouver, British Columbia. But scientists thought that the likely place for such a quake was off the coast.

Blogging on EARTH

As you would expect, there's been tons of coverage of the earthquake off the coast of Chile and the resulting tsunami in the mainstream media. And some of it has been notoriously poor.