From Chile to California: What Past Earthquakes Can Teach Us

Many years ago, I spoke with a structural engineer who was from the country of Chile. He knew my work focused on earthquake readiness, and in particular non-structural damage mitigation. He said a couple of things that intrigued me. He said: · Not very much earthquake preparedness happens in Chile. That is because the country is in a continual state of recovery. Not much time happens after one earthquake before the next one strikes. · Weird stuff happens in earthquakes. One earthquake shook so hard it changed GPS, grapes fell off vines, and entire regions ran out of dinner plates. This reminded me of things I’ve heard about the potential disruption to civilization when the next major earthquake strikes the United States. Things like: · Aftershocks will be so plentiful and strong that a “New Normal” will exist in regions where the big one hits. Whether we are talking about a new Madrid break, a Hayward fault break, a Cascadia Subduction Zone break, a San Andreas break, or something else (which is just as likely), society most likely won't just fix it and move on. And the news never seems to get better, does it? For example, a new study shows that something called “high-powered supercomputer runs” is just another in the long list of potential threats surrounding the Hayward fault. Just once I’d like science to say, “Oh never mind—there is no earthquake threat” in one place or another. · The relatively small Napa earthquake broke tons of swimming pool covers, created streams where there had been none, and dumped so much wine into the sewage system that the poop-eating bacteria got drunk and a lot of scrambling was done to sober the little critters up. All of this reminds me of what a renowned earthquake engineer, in fact the man I consider the grandfather of earthquake engineering, Peter Yanev, has been saying for years: Experiential Data matters. We can prepare for future earthquakes by looking at what happened in past earthquakes and taking steps to prevent that type of damage. I consider where I live, in California. One look at a map of Turkey (see below) and it doesn’t take too much effort for that country, which has had damaging earthquakes recently, to look an awful lot like California, turned on its side. Try it. Look at the image below and rotate it 90 degrees. It looks like California, with all that red (BAD) earthquake threat going throughout the region. Can we learn lessons from Turkey earthquakes? From the Napa earthquake? How about from the recent Myanmar and Venezuela earthquakes? You bet we can. And what is one major lesson? Secure your space.