The Hammer of Thor: Part 2

YOWUSA.COM, 08-August-04
Dale Caruso

…Continued

When Scientific Studies Cancel Each Other

Confusing, isn’t it?  What has caused continued confusion is that the scientific community can't even reach accord.

Beginning in 1999, a series of reports fueled and confused the issue of the threat posed to the mid section of this country by another major event along the New Madrid Fault System.

Some geologists envisioned a 90 percent chance that earthquakes of magnitude 6 to 7 will strike the region in the next 50 years, causing extensive damage and injury - especially in now heavily populated urban areas such as St. Louis and Memphis, built along the Mississippi on unstable mud banks.

However, in April 1999, Science magazine published a controversial study, which concluded, "The hazard posed by great earthquakes in the New Madrid seismic zone appears to be overestimated."

The authors of the 1999 study, led by geologist Seth Stein of Northwestern University, wrote that a large earthquake would not strike the region for at least 1,000 years.

"It is also possible that 1811-12-style earthquakes may never recur," according to the Stein research team.

The authors used Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite measurements to track ground movement in the New Madrid region between 1991 and 1997, but observed "little, if any motion" within the fault zone.

According to Stein and his co-authors, this lack of movement suggests that it would take at least 1,000 years to accumulate enough stress along the fault to generate a magnitude 7 earthquake - and at least 2,500 years for a magnitude 8 temblor to occur.

Is that good news for the area?  Are residents there able to breathe a little easier?  Not according to another study that came out just a few months later, that called into question some of the assumptions and conclusions made by the Northwestern University report.

The headline in the “Journal of Science” read, "New Madrid Earthquakes Still Threaten the Central United States, Scientists Conclude."  In this September 2000 report, “Science” reported, "The threat of large earthquakes striking the New Madrid seismic zone remains all too real for people in St. Louis, Memphis and other parts of the central United States - despite recent reports to the contrary.”

That is the conclusion of a new study by geophysicists Shelley J. Kenner and Paul Segall.

According to the authors, devastating earthquakes could rip through the New Madrid seismic zone along the Mississippi River sometime this century - potentially causing widespread destruction from Arkansas to Iowa.

"We can't say for certain there aren't going to be any earthquakes in the next few decades," says Kenner, a postdoc in geophysics at Cal Tech and lead author of the Sept. 29 “Science” study.

"There was a sequence of large earthquakes in the past, and it could happen again," adds Segall, a professor of geophysics at Stanford."

In June of 2000, top scientists and engineers met in St. Louis.  Marianna Riley covered the event for the:

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

The ghost of the late Iben Browning, the climatologist who 10 years ago predicted an earthquake along the New Madrid Fault, was hovering as a group of scientists and engineers gathered Thursday in St. Louis.

The 260 earthquake experts gathered ... for a three-day meeting of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute.  They are here to talk about various ways to reduce losses when the next Big One shakes things up.

Their aims are serious and practical, the antithesis of Browning's sensational tactics, which caused a major media frenzy and a minor panic.  The annual meeting is the group's first in the Midwest.

“The leading experts on earthquake engineering are here in this room," said Daniel Abrams, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Illinois at Champaign -Urbana.  Abrams is also director of the Mid-America Earthquake Center there, which played host to the meeting.

But since it's hard to discuss earthquakes in the Midwest without mentioning the New Madrid Fault, Browning's unsupported prediction is still associated with that seismic zone even a decade later.

What concerned those gathered the most?  According to Riley,

If a major New Madrid earthquake of the magnitude felt in 1811-1812 occurs again, economists figure that damage costs could total around $200 billion, mostly in indirect business losses rather than in toppled buildings.

That's more than any of the earthquakes on the West Coast have cost and the $150 billion cost of the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan.

Abrams said that Browning's attempt to predict an earthquake to the day was irresponsible but that raising public awareness about the New Madrid Fault was probably a good thing.  Browning died in 1991.

"There will be an earthquake, but nobody knows when," said keynote speaker James Lee Witt, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

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Part of what the earthquake experts want to accomplish is to influence community leaders to commit funds toward making buildings and other structures safer in earthquakes.

The earthquake engineers say that taking the expensive steps to make structures earthquake-resistant is money saved in the end.

Witt said he wanted FEMA to work with various agencies to tie earthquake-proofing efforts to the awarding of government funds.

“Such precautions make sense,” said Phillip Gould, professor of civil engineering at Washington University and a regional director of the Mid-America Earthquake Center.  “The earthquake in Kobe showed that, in general, new structures fared better than old,” he said.

The problem, the engineers agree, is how to determine if it is practical and cost-effective to make the old structures earthquake-resistant.

In St. Louis and St. Louis County, building codes include seismic risk reduction, for both new construction and for rehabbing old buildings.  The problem comes with enforcement.

This lack of scientific consensus also serves to undermine any effort to effect the critical changes that this conference in St. Louis suggested.  It would seem all this has done is to give developers and many municipalities and cities the "wiggle room" needed to cast aside caution in the name of profitability.  Penny says,

In my mind the statement of Stein’s results and his conclusion regarding easing building standards borders on malfeasance!  Seismologists and geologists agree they do not fully understand what is causing the stress and periodic release of energy observed on the New Madrid, and yet some are saying to ease the standards.  The developers and others who argue against adopting the International Uniform Building Code for seismic zones for the Memphis area have latched onto this statement and are riding it as far as they can.  Their argument is that if the cost-benefit ratio (which depends upon the estimated probability of an earthquake) is too high, it is not economical to adopt the more stringent standards.

Memphis – In the Crosshairs

According to Penny, “The people of the area will suffer if this argument is not stopped in its tracks.  Memphis does not adhere at this time to seismic standards!

They are considering a whole new development along the river front, including a 30 story building on the edge of the bluffs.”

Truly, Memphis is looking down the barrel of a loaded seismic gun, and has done virtually nothing to move out of the crosshairs.  When the earth pulls the trigger, will cities like Memphis and St. Louis be able to dodge the bullet?

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