Earthquakes

Earthquakes Threaten Major Cities Across the U.S
By Randolph Schmid, Associated Press, September 20, 2000

While California faces the nation's greatest earthquake risk, a government report says the threat of severe damage from these tremors crosses the nation. New York and Boston in the East and Memphis, Tennessee, and St. Louis in the middle are among the places at risk for damage and loss caused by quakes. Federal Emergency Management Agency Director James Lee Witt said that while the chance of being in an earthquake remained fairly constant over the years, the risk of damage has increased substantially. "That's because of the increase of urban development in high seismic hazard areas and the vulnerability of older buildings, which were not built to adequate seismic code," he said. In addition to California metropolitan areas, cities facing the highest potential losses include Seattle; Portland, Oregon; New York; Salt Lake City; St. Louis; Tacoma, Washington; Las Vegas; Anchorage, Alaska; Boston; Reno, Nevada; Memphis, Tennessee; Charleston, South Carolina; Albuquerque; Newark, New Jersey; Honolulu and Atlanta, according to the report being released Wednesday at the National Earthquake Risk Management Conference in Seattle.

Still, the report anticipates that the vast majority of future damage will be in California because of that state's combination of high seismic hazard and high economic exposure. That combination also applies to Seattle and Portland, according to the study. In recent years, earthquakes have become most closely associated with California because of the widely reported damaging tremors there. But two temblors that vie for recognition as the most powerful quakes felt in North America struck elsewhere. One rocked the New Madrid Fault in Missouri, near its border with Tennessee, in a series of quakes in 1811-12, while the second devastated the Anchorage, Alaska area in 1964. The New Madrid quake reportedly caused the Mississippi Rover to flow backward for a time but there were few people or buildings in the area at the time. Today the same quake could severely damage the area from St. Louis to Memphis.