[125 years ago this coming weekend, the first name in earthquakes, Charles Richter, was born. So in his honor I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of seismic quakes, leading up to a special post on Richter himself!]
On one
striking detail about each of three quakes that followed the 1906 disaster on
which I focused in yesterday’s post.
1)
San
Fernando in 1971: Perhaps the worst quake to hit California since 1906,
this hugely destructive disaster was also (as that hyperlinked website
highlights at length) strikingly productive, resulting in a number of new policies,
laws, and research programs that substantially improved the state’s
infrastructure and disaster readiness. I’d point in particular to the Earthquake Clearinghouse, a groundbreaking
resource (bad pun intended, but also it really was and is) that has become a
model for how multiple scientists and organizations can share information and
ideas.
2)
The Bay Area in 1989:
No amount of preparation or readiness could prevent earthquakes from occurring,
of course, and the next major one would hit the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Area
(the first major quake in that region since 1906) in October 1989. Like the 1906
quake, this one’s epicenter was on the San Andreas fault,
which to my understanding remains the most fragile site for such disasters to
this day. But for this AmericanStudier, as I’m sure for many Americans then and
since, what made this quake truly stand out was its impact on the World Series,
the first and to date only that featured the two Bay Area teams—and which was delayed
for a week due to the quake.
3)
Northridge in
1994: To come full circle to my first item, this catastrophic Southern
California quake was particularly ironic because it came four years after the California
Legislature passed the Seismic Hazards Mapping
Act of 1990. As with most bureaucratic processes, the actual such mapping
had proceeded slowly, and likely had not been able to take much effect by the
time of this January 1994 quake (which would be, perhaps unrelatedly but
perhaps not, the costliest earthquake in US history). In any case, this
disaster certainly sped up the mapping and zoning processes, and in the decades
since Northridge a great deal of Southern California and the state overall have
been assessed and developed to make them safer before the next big one.
Next quake
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Famous quakes or other natural disasters you’d analyze?
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