Earthquake! Be prepared.

We live in earthquake country, here in Nevada. But earthquakes can and have occurred throughout much of the United States. Travelling to earthquake prone areas of the world can also leave you at risk, so it’s wise to have some earthquake awareness.

The difference in fatalities and overall destruction between the Haitian quake and the much larger (100 times bigger ) 8.8 earthquake in Chile boils down to much better construction standards in Chile in addition to a much higher earthquaker awareness among Chile’s citizens.

Even the day of the big quake, persons interviewed in Chile, while not exactly blase about it, are relatively calm even as many are being evacuated from unsafe areas.

As engineers like to say: “earthquakes don’t kill people. Falling buildings do.”

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Geo-technical aspects of the Haitian earthquake

I was getting a lot of inquiries about the various technical aspects of the earthquake that devastated Haiti, so I emailed my neighbor who is a geologist with a background in seismology. Here is her reply:

“This little request of yours could turn into a major research project, Cindy.  Try these links.  They’re a little more technical than what you generally find in the newspapers.”

Hmmmm.

Well, here are some cool links for the more scientific of my readers:

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/poster/2010/20100112.jpg

http://www.iris.edu/hq/files/programs/education_and_outreach/retm/tm_100112_haiti/haiti_flash.swf

http://www.gdacs.org/reports.asp?eventType=EQ&ID=73957&system=asgard&location=HTI&alertlevel=Orange&glide_no

http://mceer.buffalo.edu/infoservice/disasters/Haiti-Earthquake-2010.asp

http://www.jsg.utexas.edu/news/rels/011310.html

This is pretty interesting, considering how relatively young the science of earthquake forecasting is:

In 2008, Paul Mann, Eric Calais and colleagues presented a paper at the Caribbean Conference and David Manaker, Eric Calais and colleagues published a journal article both forecasting a 7.2 magnitude earthquake in the area of Haiti, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic.  The forecast was based on an integration of geologic information on the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault zone with GPS data collected in the region.