On Shaky Ground

by Nance, John J. ;

  For ten years Linda had been seismologist at the University of Washington, and working on hazard reduction programs and public education under USGS and FEMA contracts. She had become known as the state seismologist from such work, but the fact that it was an unofficial title pointed up how little was being done officially. And with the Seattle-Tacoma area’s massive seismic exposure, what was being done was ridiculously insufficient.

  And for as many years she and a few other volunteers had crisscrossed the state, giving programs and talks to schoolchildren, trying to convince uninterested school district administrators of the vulnerability of their buildings and their students, and generally fighting a very lonely, largely unsupported battle.

  All of the Puget Sound area (containing Seattle and Tacoma and many smaller communities) was built on a known seismic danger zone. For decades it had been common knowledge that deep-focus earthquakes as well as shallow earthquakes greater than ML 6.0 could shake the area at any time (and had many times before), yet in 1987 there were still no BAREPPs (Bay Area Earthquake Preparedness Project as in San Francisco) or SCEPPs (Southern California Earthquake Preparedness Project as in Los Angeles), no organized hazard mitigation efforts or public education drives, and no major emphasis on upgraded land use planning.

  There was only Linda Noson—and a few friends—standing between Washington’s western cities and complete ignorance.

  “What will it take to get them off their tails and shake their complacency?” she was asked.

  Linda sat back and smiled, almost wistfully.

  “Even if [the population is] convinced, I don’t think everyone will suddenly start preparing for a magnitude nine earthquake. We had major, killing earthquakes here in 1949 and 1965. We know we’re subject to major quakes even without a subduction zone, and there are many things we have long needed to do to prepare which just haven’t been given any priority.1

  “We had a seismic safety bill which passed 2 years ago, but it was vetoed by the governor. He thought it was better to give that function to the existing Department of Emergency Management, which would then form a Seismic Safety Council.2

  “I can’t say nothing is being done, but there’s not enough. The state of Oregon is in far worse shape, though. Portland has had large earthquakes before—is subject to the same great quakes Brian Atwater is documenting—and yet they only have a seismic zone 2 building code, with much of their city built on alluvial Jell-O, and virtually no hazard reduction programs. At least Seattle is a seismic zone 3.”

  Noson fell silent again for a minute, seeming almost physically overwhelmed behind a desk piled high with reports and papers, flanked by an impressive stack of bookshelves bearing hundreds of pounds of seismological and technical information. While her role at the university would be ending from lack of funds; she would be transferring shortly to the Federal Emergency Management Authority as a natural hazards specialist, and her struggle for earthquake education would continue.

  “I guess I get the most frustrated at not being able to provide the resources—the money and the materials and the assistance—to the people who want to push hazard reduction programs forward. There is so much to do, and so little to do it with. Getting people motivated to change that will be a monumental task.…”

  Linda Noson tapped a pencil on the book in front of her for emphasis.

  “But it must be done! We’re vulnerable—very vulnerable—yet we have the power to protect ourselves if we’ll just do it!”

  From the viewpoint of a low stone wall at Kerry Park atop Seattle’s Queen Anne Hill, the Space Needle, the proud centerpiece of the 1962 Seattle world’s fair stands in the foreground like a metallic exclamation point emphasizing the growth and success of the Seattle downtown district. On the evening of March 27, 1964, the Needle rocked harmlessly through the massive P and S waves coursing in from Alaska (as a group of eminent seismologists looked up from their dinners in the rotating restaurant on top).

  The following year a mighty ML 6.5 quake beneath the Puget Sound region had rocked the Needle again, once more without significant effect—though many buildings in the area were damaged.

  But what will happen when monstrous seismic shaking of many seconds’ duration from a cataclysmic subduction zone quake a hundred times more powerful and nine hundred times more energetic than the Puget Sound quake of 1965 ripples and roils Seattle’s foundation with a magnitude of 8.5 or higher?

  Moreover, what will the public response be when the people of the Pacific Northwest realize the monstrous seismic threat in the subduction zone beneath them? Will there be the sort of denial with which the people of Mammoth Lakes used to cloak themselves from the truth? Will there be a forced ignorance—a laissez-faire refusal to acknowledge the threat, such as that exhibited by Anchorage? Or will this community face up to what needs to be done? With that very challenge facing the entire Pacific Northwest, it will constitute a fascinating study in the psychology and sociology of the process of applying the real-time discoveries of science to the real-time lives of people in a complex social and economic system.

  Just over a mile south of the Space Needle sits the new seventy-six-story Columbia Center, Seattle’s tallest skyscraper—the tallest building west of the Mississippi. To the right, peeking over another rooftop, is the Smith Tower (which once held the same title), very, very vulnerable with its heavy use of masonry throughout. Just behind the tower sits the gigantic concrete roof of the Kingdome sports stadium and municipal arena, a structure which can hold more than seventy thousand human beings at one time—perhaps at exactly the wrong moment in time. And farther to the southwest, along the mud flats, sits a garrison of more than a dozen giant containerized cargo cranes, each of them many times larger than the crane that “walked” into the bay at Seward in 1964 from the Alaska Railroad dock (almost taking its operator with it). The Port of Seattle’s facilities are located largely on the soft mud and sand of the Duwamish River—much as Tacoma’s port facilities and cranes and buildings sit on similar risky muds deposited in the past several thousand years by the Puyallup River, which enters Puget Sound some thirty miles to the south of Seattle. The effects of massive seismic waves on such soils might well parallel Mexico City—yet little has been done to examine the hazards, let alone reduce them.

  Unreinforced masonry structures sit on suspect real estate throughout the Pacific Northwest, from Canada’s Vancouver in British Columbia (a little over 120 miles north of Seattle), through Portland, Oregon, 180 miles to the south. Millions of people and billions of dollars of property values remain in the valley of the shadow of seismic cataclysm, yet almost no one pays any attention to what could happen—what will happen—someday.

  The impressive sight of Seattle’s prosperous downtown skyline in stark contrast to the reality and the magnitude of the seismic threat is typical of cities throughout North America. But as one USGS scientist put it, “Believe me, once you visit the site of a major earthquake where thousands have died and see a few arms sticking out of a few collapsed apartment buildings or hospitals, you become very motivated to recognize the hazards, and to do something about them before that disaster area is your own community.”

  Even California scientists and hazard mitigation workers have a hard time convincing their people (and their municipal leaders) that preparing for the coming southern San Andreas great quake—preventing the loss of thousands of lives and billions in property damage—will take years of preparation and millions of dollars. Everywhere else in the country—a nation in which fully thirty-nine states have been declared significant seismic hazard zones—the danger of earthquakes has always been passed off as a “California problem” or a “West Coast problem.”

  But as is very clear, the East Coast of the United States in general and places such as Buffalo, Charleston, and Memphis in particular are highly vulnerable to earthquake damage even from a smaller quake, yet too little, if anything, is being done anywhere in the nation.

  “It’s a good news/bad news l
ist,” as one seismologist put it. “The bad news is we’re vulnerable; the good news is we can do an awful lot about it.”

  Another knowledgeable scientist, Dr. Arch Johnston of Memphis, has presented in more eloquent terms the very same thing before several congressional committees. “We can’t do anything about the hazard, we can’t prevent earthquakes for the foreseeable future, but we can do something about the degree of risk!”

  There are answers. Straightforward, logical methods of realizing that the United States is among the nations of the world with major exposure to ruinous earthquakes, and that we have it in our power to reduce the potential damage of such monstrous episodes of ground shaking to very handleable proportions. Many suggestions can be formulated, but there is a list of basics for the entire nation:

  1.Admit that a hazard exists. Force public and governmental leaders to admit the reality of the seismic hazard, and the scope of the seismic risk (or exposure).

  2. Fund and support continuous research, nationally and at state level, to map and identify specific risk areas in each locality, and to provide strong national funding and direction for continuous research into basic seismological, geological, paleoseismological, volcanological, geophysical, and prediction efforts along with their sociological effects.

  3. Defuse the seismic bombs.

  a. Change and upgrade building codes to reflect rational seismic threats.

  b. Require reconstruction, reinforcement, or destruction of seismically dangerous buildings and structures of all types, public and private (especially schools, whether public, private, or parochial).

  c. Limit the use of dangerous or seismically vulnerable land; prevent the Turnagain Heights syndrome.

  d. Establish programs of education (especially for school children) to inform everyone on what he or she should do to prepare for an earthquake, what to do in an earthquake, and what to do immediately after an earthquake and, on what to insist that our governmental leaders do to support and fund earthquake hazard reduction programs.

  4. Immediately pass a National Natural Hazards or National Earthquake Hazards Insurance Program providing required, standardized earthquake insurance with very low deductibles for everyone—homeowners, business owners, and cities alike—spreading and minimizing the risk through a government reinsurance corporation (or similar plan).

  5. Establish and fund programs similar to SCEPP and BAREPP throughout the United States.

  And, of course, there is the pipeline into the future of seismological knowledge—the graduate students and would-be graduate students being starved nationwide of opportunities for funding and chances for employment as professional scientists. It is entirely possible that had Kerry Sieh come along in 1987 instead of 1972, there would have been no student program money available for the pivotal research that catapulted him into graduate school, fixed the idea of trenching across faults to gather historical seismicity information, and gave us invaluable knowledge of the southern San Andreas Fault’s history and future. Without a major national rededication to scientific research, there might be too few jobs available for bright, dedicated, excited young scientists such as Karen McNally, Tom Heaton, or Brian Atwater in the upcoming generation of graduate students.

  There is so very much to discover in an area of science that is in its infancy and is wide open to the bright minds and dedicated, impassioned researchers of tomorrow.

  But it is also very obvious that the scientific breakthroughs of tomorrow—the possibility of accurate, lifesaving short-range prediction of earthquakes, the expanded understanding of exactly what is in store for the eastern United States, Utah, Tennessee, Washington, and unprepared Anchorage, Alaska, and American leadership in the geophysical sciences—depend on the progress of students, which in turn depends on funds that seem to be evaporating and employment possibilities which seem to be contracting. Indeed, it will be our future scientific knowledge and scientific leadership which will end up imperiled and shortchanged if we’re too budget-conscious today to pay the minimum bill for tomorrow.

  “I am an idealist with no illusions!” John F. Kennedy once proclaimed. The phrase seems a perfect balance to so many of the challenges facing mankind and especially this one. It may take a degree of idealism to think that our cities and homes and lives can be adjusted to ride through great earthquakes with minimal damage—our insurance programs guaranteeing the recovery of our personal lives and our economy from the effects of damage we can’t prevent—but it is merely realism to apply a known set of solutions to a known hazard so as to minimize the risk.

  And, conversely, it is stupidity to do nothing but wait for preventable disasters.

  Throughout mankind’s tenancy on earth, natural hazards—including earthquakes—have formed an unmodifiable clause in our contract with nature.

  “Civilization exists by geological consent,” wrote historian Will Durant, “… subject to change without notice.”

  At long last, though—after thousands of years of helplessness in the face of such disasters as earthquakes—we have the means, and the license, to amend that clause. Our scientific understanding can provide us with notice, and our hazard reduction efforts can render many aspects of “geologic consent” immaterial.

  The only question is, will we get around to doing it, while we have time?

  Footnotes

  Chapter 1

  1. The problem was a classic one in modern seismology. The task of convincing people that damaging earthquakes can occur is very difficult, even though thirty-nine states containing cities such as Memphis, St. Louis, Chicago, Pittsburgh, New York City, Washington, D.C., Salt Lake City, along with large communities such as Buffalo and Charleston, South Carolina, are clearly in harm’s way. The active, dangerous faults are hard to find east of the Rockies, not because they don’t exist, but because they’re buried under thousands of feet of younger layers of rock which obscure the deep cracks in the continental crust—the principal material of the massive, ever-moving North American plate. But, because they are hard to find, too many people erroneously believe they don’t exist.

  2. Juan de Fuca, a Greek sea captain of dubious accomplishment whose real name was Apostolos Valerianos, claimed to have found the entrance to “a broad inlet of sea” on a mysterious voyage for the Spaniards in 1592—a hundred years after Columbus sailed to North America and two hundred years before British Captain George Vancouver entered the region. The Spaniards called him Juan de Fuca, and a book detailing his claims circulated for two centuries before fur trader Charles Barkley found the wild and beautiful inlet between what are now known as the Olympic Peninsula and Vancouver Island. About the time that Spanish and British expeditions were sailing in and out of the Puget Sound region (from 1775 on), Barkley gave the strait the name of the long-dead Greek, Juan de Fuca—whose claim is widely disputed by historians. (An excellent discussion of this comes from the locally published book Magic Islands: The San Juans of Northwest Washington, by David Richardson [Orcas Publishing Co., 1964, 1973], p. 13)

  3. This is from Dr. Tom Heaton and Dr. Parke Snaveley’s paper, “Possible Tsunami Along the Northwestern Coast of the United States Inferred from Indian Traditions,” published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, in 1985 (vol. 75, pp. 1455–60).

  Chapter 3

  1. This was a study done by Ernest Dobrovolny and Robert Miller in 1959 entitled “Surficial Geology of Anchorage and Vicinity, Alaska,” which was published in the U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 1093 (1959).

  Chapter 4

  1. The epicenter of a seismic event—an earthquake—is a point on the surface of the earth directly above the location where the principal point of breakage is located. The point of breakage itself, sometimes scores of miles beneath the epicenter, is called the hypocenter, or the focus.

  2. When rocks break, they produce two types of seismic waves: compression (or P, for primary) waves and body waves (S for secondary), which in turn produce long wavelength surface waves. P waves travel
faster than S waves, but the ratio of the speeds of the two kinds of waves is a constant; which is why the simple measurement of P and S arrival times in distant locations on the earth can reveal the distance the waves traveled and where the quake is located.

  Hitting a long board on one end produces compression waves; the molecules move out and back when viewed from the source. S waves, however, move from side to side or up and down when viewed from the source (transverse motion at right angles to the point of origin). It is the S waves and the surface waves they create in the ground that begin yanking foundations out from beneath houses and buildings or creating sympathetic vibrations in tall structures that can cause collapse. It is the S waves and surface waves that cause water-saturated sandy soil to liquefy and flow like a viscous liquid. It is these transverse waves that shake unreinforced masonry buildings into rubble, cause cracks in the ground, and shatter glass windows.

  3. To understand this, think of trying to drag a heavy pallet of bricks across a field by pulling on it with a huge rubber band. You would have to put great tension on the rubber band at first, pulling very hard, before the stored energy in the taut rubber band could break the frictional tension between the bottom of the pallet and the ground. When that happened, when that singular moment came, the pallet would leap forward, propelled by all the energy you had stored in the rubber band by pulling it so taut. Once freed from the ground friction and with momentum imparted to it, the pallet of bricks would move forward to a point where the now-decreased tension on the rubber band could no longer move it. Once again the friction between the pallet and the ground would be far greater than the force you are imparting with the rubber band, until once again you pull it tightly enough to cause the same cycle to occur over again. This is basically the same sequence “mechanism” which works in seismic strain, where rocks “snag,” or develop too much friction between them, to be overcome by the normal forces pushing them past each other. The pressures—energy—stored in those rocks have to grow sufficiently over time to large enough values to overcome the friction. When the breaking point comes and the rocks snap to a new position, the friction will once again exceed the newly lowered levels of stored energy. If snags are sufficiently large and strong, the resulting breaks produce large earthquakes. If the snags cover a small area and are weak, the seismic waves created when the inevitable snap occurs are minor. Keeping this system in mind will explain much of what the past twenty-three years of discovery in seismology have validated. But please keep in mind as well that in 1964, this type of system as applied to earthquakes was little more than a distant theory in a few brilliant and inquisitive minds.