Seattle's Vulnerability

Via the Dish, here and here.



As the second post says:

A reader writes:

Another headline you won't see: "Millions saved in Seattle by good engineering and government building codes". California is thought to be safe from >8.0 earthquakes (but even 6.x quakes do quite a bit of damage). The Pacific Northwest, on the other hand:

A magnitude 9.0 or above quake in the Pacific Northwest is expected. Those quakes, which are the product of vast and deep faults, are characterized by their severity and the duration of shaking when they strike. ... A quake in the 9.0 range occurs in the Pacific Northwest region every 300 - 500 years. The last one was in 1700, which scientists know because of a tsunami that was recorded in Japan at the time.

Current Seattle building codes are probably pretty good, but older buildings - and there are more than in Japan because the city hasn't ever been hit by a devastating quake or war - are at heavy risk

In much the same way that wars teach Americans geography, disasters teach Americans of their vulnerability to the same threats.  After Katrina, I remembered being puzzled at why New Orleans sits below sea level behind levies, then I learned that one of the fastest growing areas in the US, the Sacramento River delta also faces the threat of levee failure and flooding:

The 700,000-acre Sacramento-San Joaquin delta receives more than 40% of California's rainfall. It is the main source of water for about 23 million people. But most of the land is below sea level and is protected by more than 1,000 miles of levees.

It is easy to be complacent, and expensive to try to protect ourselves.