USGS Report: Up to Half of L.A. Buildings Would Be Uninhabitable After Large Quake: “Significant Disruption of Inter-Dependent Infrastructure”

Thursday, December 12, 2013
By Paul Martin

Mac Slavo
December 11th, 2013
SHTFplan.com

Tens of millions of Americans depend on the stable functioning of infrastructure systems like transportation, utility services, food delivery and communications. Without them modern society comes to a standstill. The U.S. government, under the direction of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and local emergency teams, has spent billions of dollars to ensure operability of these essential societal nodes in the event of an emergency, but for some parts of the country, it may not be enough. A report from the US Geological Survey (USGS), a research arm of the federal government, indicates that the West Coast of the United States, namely those areas directly on or in the vicinity of fault lines, is not equipped to deal with a wide scale emergency that would directly impact these infrastructure systems.

The threat is a high-magnitude earthquake, something most Americans living in these areas assume will not have a significant impact on their lives because of building codes and existing disaster response plans implemented by government emergency planners. Many residents of these areas have become complacent because previous earthquakes, while damaging, didn’t adversely affect their day-to-day lives.

The earthquakes that struck San Francisco in 1989 and Los Angeles in 1994 measured 6.9 and 6.7 on the Richter scale respectively. Hundreds of buildings in both cities collapsed in their aftermath, with nearly ten times as many being “red flagged” as uninhabitable. Neither of these quakes were strong enough to affect the underlying infrastructure on a widespread scale. Life continued on as if nothing had happened following the initial destruction. According to the USGS, there have been over 120 earthquakes measuring in this range – between 6.0 and 6.9 on the Richter scale – in 2013, so they’re not uncommon.

But these aren’t the quakes scientists are concerned about with respect to damage levels. It’s the “mega-quakes,” which measure around 7.5 or higher that pose the biggest threat to populated areas on the West Coast. Though they don’t happen very often, this year the USGS has measured six such earthquakes around the world, so it’s not out of the question to suggest that a seismic event of this magnitude could potentially occur in Los Angeles or any major West Coast city at any time.

USGS researcher Dr. Lucy Jones, who spoke to 20,000 geoscientists from around the globe at this year’s American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, simulated the effects of a 7.8 quake originating just south of Los Angeles along the San Andreas fault line. The results were shocking. According to Dr. Jones, not only would nearly half of the buildings in L.A. become uninhabitable due to structural damage, but essential infrastructure systems would collapse almost instantaneously.

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