Earthquake News
China warns quake death toll could reach 80,000
By TINI TRAN, Associated Press Writer Sat May 24, 1:36 PM ET
YINGXIU, China - China warned Saturday that the death toll from a massive earthquake two weeks ago could take a major leap and pass 80,000, suggesting the government may be giving up hope of finding more survivors.
But rescuers rushed anyway to reach 24 coal miners who officials said were trapped in three mines by the disaster, though it was not known if the miners were alive.
"We have had the miracle in the past that a miner was found alive after being trapped underground for 21 days," Wang Dexue, the deputy chief of the government's work safety department, told a news conference in Beijing. "We are carrying out rescue work on the assumption that they are still alive. We absolutely will not give up."
Wang gave no further details of the trapped miners. China's mines are the world's deadliest, with explosions, cave-ins and floods killing nearly 3,800 people last year.
Meanwhile, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon made a brief visit Saturday to one of the hardest-hit towns, Yingxiu — a helicopter ride that offered a rare bird's-eye views of the destruction wrought by the 7.9-magnitude quake on May 12.
The mountains in central Sichuan province showed huge tracks of naked earth from landslides. Layers of mud covered fields. Rivers churned brown. Yingxiu itself was largely piles of rubble, and the buildings left standing had caved in, giving the surreal impression that they had melted.
The State Council, China's Cabinet, said Saturday the latest confirmed death toll for the quake — China's biggest disaster in three decades — was 60,560, with 26,221 people still missing.
Premier Wen Jiabao, on a return visit to the quake zone to accompany Ban, warned the toll could go much higher.
"It may further climb to a level of 70,000, 80,000 or more," Wen said, standing amid the rubble in Yingxiu. The jump could occur as the number of missing are added to the number of dead.
About 15 minutes before Wen started talking, yet another minor aftershock rumbled.
Ban, who came to China directly from cyclone-stricken Myanmar, promised the U.N. would help with reconstruction and that it was waiting for China's assessment of what was needed.
"If we work hard, we can overcome this," Ban said, with Wen standing at his side. "The whole world stands behind you and supports you."
The secretary-general left China later Saturday and was to attend an aid donors conference in Myanmar for cyclone victims on Sunday.
About 4,800 of Yingxiu's 18,000 people were killed in the quake, a military officer told Ban during a tour. Reporters could see government workers in hooded white protective suits spraying disinfectant on the rubble.
Underscoring doubts that more survivors would be found, Wen said the government's focus had shifted from rescue to rebuilding.
"Previously our main priority was the search and rescue of affected people," Wen said. "Our priority now is to resettle the affected people and to make plans for post-quake reconstruction."
It won't be easy. The quake destroyed more than 15 million homes, Wen said. He said the government needed 900,000 tents and urged Chinese manufacturers to make 30,000 a day.
As the government grappled with the task of rebuilding — a process Sichuan Vice Governor Li Chengyun has said could take three years — it also watched for a variety of secondary disasters.
Experts searched for 15 radiation sources buried in the rubble, although they said there were no leaks or public health risk. And survivors left flood-risk areas downstream from rivers that had been dammed by landslides.
With their water pooling and the rainy season coming, the "quake lakes" could breach the earthen barriers and sweep down already fragile valleys.
Meanwhile, some 10,000 medical workers have been dispatched to prevent disease outbreaks.
"The second major challenge facing us is epidemic prevention and control," Wen said, adding that no outbreaks had been reported so far.
The premier also promised that China would continue its openness about the quake, in which the government has accepted foreign relief teams and allowed Chinese media to report in relative depth on the disaster.
"From the very beginning of the disaster relief, we put people's lives above all," Wen said, "We have adopted an open policy because we think it was not only the disaster for Chinese people, but the people of the world. Our spirit of putting people above all and our open policy will not change."
Also Saturday, eight pandas reached Beijing safely after a long journey from their damaged reserve near the quake's epicenter. The pandas will spend the next six months at the Beijing Zoo on a special Olympics visit that was planned long before the quake.
The pandas' home at the world-famous Wolong reserve was badly damaged by the quake and five staff members were killed.
The pandas have been closely watched because they seemed nervous after the earthquake, sometimes eating and sleeping less. But the pandas appeared lively after they were moved into their exhibit space at the Beijing Zoo on Saturday evening, even putting their paws on the glass separating them from the media and the public.
China Quake Death Toll Could Reach 50,000 (AP, May 16, 2008)
Survivors pulled from rubble of China quake
By AUDRA ANG, Associated Press Writer
BEICHUAN, China - Rescuers pulled survivors from the rubble Friday who had been buried for four days as a strong aftershock sparked landslides near the epicenter of this week's powerful earthquake.
The first foreign rescue workers since Monday's magnitude 7.9 temblor were allowed to the scene, and helicopters dropped leaflets urging people to "unite together" and providing survival tips. Officials have said the quake's final toll could reach 50,000.
A day past what experts call the critical three-day window for finding survivors, rescuers pulled a nurse to safety who had been trapped for 96 hours in the debris of a clinic in Beichuan county, Xinhua reported.
A call from the ruins of an apartment building drew a group of volunteers, who spent more than four hours using hands and spades to rescue a middle-aged woman. Brought to the surface, she could not speak and was given to medics.
"She had the will to live," said Xu Tao, one of the volunteers, a demobilized soldier and now an office worker in the eastern city of Tangshan. "I'm just exhausted."
About 10 people were pulled free Friday. Survivors also were being found elsewhere, with a man pulled from the wreckage of a fertilizer plant near Shifang city.
Dr. Irving "Jake" Jacoby of the University of California, San Diego, said the vast majority of people are rescued in the first 24 hours after a disaster, and that the chances of survival drop as each day passes.
If someone is trapped but is relatively uninjured, they could survive for a week or even 10 days, and in extreme circumstances two weeks or more.
"They could live for a week without food but water is needed" to prevent dehydration," said Jacoby, who heads a medical assistance team in San Diego that responded to the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in California, Hurricane Katrina and other disasters.
On Friday afternoon, an aftershock rattled parts of central Sichuan province, the official Xinhua News Agency said. A number of vehicles were buried on a road leading to the epicenter, and casualties were unknown. The U.S. Geological Survey said the latest tremor measured magnitude 5.5, one of the strongest among dozens that have shaken the area.
Education and housing officials, meanwhile, took the rare move of fielding questions online from angry Chinese citizens over the many children who died in the quake. The official death toll had risen to about 22,069 on Friday, and another 14,000 still were buried in Sichuan.
The government said it would investigate why so many school buildings collapsed in the quake — destroying about 6,900 classrooms, not including the hardest-hit counties — and severely punish anyone responsible for shoddy construction.
More than 4 million apartments and homes had been damaged or destroyed in Sichuan province, according to Housing Minister Jiang Weixin. Jiang said the water supply situation was "extremely serious" in Sichuan, and not flowing at all in 20 cities and counties.
Caring for the untold tens of thousands or more survivors across the earthquake zone was stretching government resources.
Shifang's town square became a tented encampment holding 2,000 people and coordinator Li Yuanshao said there weren't enough tents. Many had walked from surrounding towns with few belongings.
"We brought almost nothing, only the clothes we are wearing," said Zhang Xinyong, a junior in high school who had walked several hours to the camp. They were sleeping on donated bamboo mats and blankets.
In the town of Yingxiu, helicopters dropped leaflets urging people to "unite together" and giving survival tips like not to drink dirty water. Power and water remained cut off, forcing dazed, exhausted locals to hike 40 yards up a steep hill to a spring to fetch water.
On another hillside, at least 80 corpses in plastic body bags were placed into a trench dug by soldiers.
Dozens of people trudged up a winding mountain road to Beichuan, carrying backpacks and bags with food and medical supplies, on a quest for missing relatives.
Liu Jingyong, a 43-year-old migrant worker searching for his cousin, traveled two days by bus and now foot just to get near his relative's home.
"I have not had any information from him," Liu said. "This is so hard on me."
One villager, Pan Guihui, stood on the side of the road with a vacant look on her face.
She and her husband had just hiked 13 hours with her 1-year-old child, father and two brothers away from their destroyed village further up the mountain. They had stayed in the rubble until rescue workers arrived and ordered them out because of fears of landslides.
"I have just been so frightened this whole time. I don't know what we are going to do," said Pan, 35. The only belongings the family had were some clothes and a little food, among hundreds camped along the road. "We've lost everything. There's nothing left of our village, nothing left of our home."
As she spoke, hundreds of soldiers marched by in long columns out of Beichuan, some carrying shovels.
In the city of Hanwang, Zhou Furen walked hours by foot — borrowing the army green shoes she was wearing — to a factory where her son had worked and remained missing.
"I've been coming here every day, sitting here in the early morning, waiting," she said, weeping. "He's been missing for more than three days now. But for my son I would come every day."
President Hu Jintao made his first trip to the disaster zone, rallying troops among the massive relief operation of some 130,000 soldiers and police.
"The challenge is still severe, the task is still arduous and the time is pressing," Hu was quoted as saying by Xinhua. "Quake relief work has entered into the most crucial phase. We must make every effort, race against time and overcome all difficulties to achieve the final victory of the relief efforts."
The first international rescue crews arrived in the disaster area, after China dropped its initial reluctance to accept foreign personnel. Japanese rescuers started work early Friday, and teams from Russia, Singapore and South Korea later joined operations, Xinhua reported.
It was the first time ever that China accepted outside professionals for domestic disaster relief, Foreign Ministry counselor Li Wenliang told Xinhua.
The government said it had allocated a total of $772 million for earthquake relief, according to the central bank's Web site, up sharply from $159 million two days ago.
China also has received $457 million in donated money and goods for rescue efforts, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, including $83 million from 19 countries and four international organizations.
Given the widespread destruction, AIR Worldwide — a catastrophe risk modeling firm — estimated losses to both insured and uninsured property would likely exceed $20 billion.
___
Associated Press writers Tini Tran in Hanwang, Anita Chang in Beijing and Stephanie Nano in New York contributed to this report.
China quake death toll rises above 8,700 (May 12, 2008)
Monday, May 12, 2008
Disasters always pose a test for the communist government, whose mandate rests heavily on maintaining order, delivering economic growth, and providing relief in emergencies.
Pressure for a rapid response was particularly intense this year, with the government already grappling with public discontent over high inflation and a widespread uprising among Tibetans in western China while trying to prepare for the Aug. 8-24 Beijing Olympics.
"I am particularly saddened by the number of students and children affected by this tragedy," President Bush said in a statement.
International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge sent his condolences to President Hu Jintao, adding: "The Olympic Movement is at your side, especially during these difficult moments. Our thoughts are with you."
Premier Wen Jiabao, a geologist by training, called the quake "a major geological disaster," and traveled to the disaster area to oversee rescue and relief operations.
"Hang on a bit longer. The troops are rescuing you," Wen shouted to people buried in the Traditional Medicine Hospital in the city of Dujiangyan, on the road to Wenchuan, in comments broadcast by CCTV.
"As long as there was a slightest hope, we should make our effort a hundred times and we will never relax," he said outside the collapsed school in Juyuan.
The quake was the deadliest since one in 1976 in the city of Tangshan near Beijing that killed 240,000 - although some reports say as many as 655,000 perished - the most devastating in modern history. A 1933 quake near where Monday's struck killed at least 9,000, according to geologists.
Monday's quake occurred on a fault where South Asia pushes against the Eurasian land mass, smashing the Sichuan plain into mountains leading to the Tibetan highlands - near communities that held sometimes violent protests of Chinese rule in mid-March.
Much of the area has been closed to foreign media and travelers since then, compounding the difficulties of getting information. Roads north from Chengdu to the disaster area were sealed off early Tuesday to all but emergency convoys.
In Chengdu, the region's commercial center, the airport closed for seven hours, reopening only for emergency and a few outbound flights. A major railway line to the northeast was ruptured, stranding about 10,000 passengers, Xinhua said. Although most of the power had been restored by nightfall, phone and Internet service was spotty and some neighborhoods remained without power and water.
Nervous residents spent the night outside, some playing cards or heading to the suburbs. State media, citing the Sichuan seismology bureau, reported 313 aftershocks.
"Traffic jams, no running water, power outs, everyone sitting in the streets, patients evacuated from hospitals sitting outside and waiting," said Ronen Medzini, an Israeli student in Chengdu, via text message.
When it hit shortly before 2:30 p.m., the quake rumbled for nearly three minutes, witnesses said, driving people into the streets in panic.
"It was really scary to be on the 26th floor in something like that," said Tom Weller, a 49-year-old American oil and gas consultant staying at the Holiday Inn. "You had to hold on to something like that or you'd fall over. It shook for so long and so violently, you wondered how long the building would be able to stand this."
While most buildings in the city held up, those in the countryside tumbled. On the outskirts of Chongqing, a school collapsed, killing at least five people. Residents said teachers kept the children inside, thinking it was safer.
The city of Mianyang ordered all able-bodied males under 50 to take water and tools and walk or drive to Beichuan, where most of the buildings had collapsed.
State TV broadcast tips for anyone trapped in the earthquake. "If you're buried, keep calm and conserve your energy. Seek water and food, and wait patiently for rescue," CCTV said.
Although initially measured at 7.8 magnitude, the U.S. Geological Survey later revised its assessment of the quake to 7.9. Its depth - about six miles below the surface, according to the USGS - gave the tremor such wide impact, geologists said.
The earthquake also rattled buildings in Beijing, 930 miles to the north, causing evacuations of office towers. People ran screaming into the streets in other cities, where many residents said they had never felt an earthquake.
In Beijing, where hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors are expected for the Olympics, stadiums, arenas and other venues for the games were undamaged.
Li Jiulin, a top engineer on the 91,000-seat National Stadium - known as the Bird's Nest and the jewel of the Olympics - was conducting a site inspection when the quake struck. He told reporters the building was designed to withstand a 8.0 quake.
"The Olympic venues were not affected by the earthquake," said Sun Weide, a spokesman for the Beijing organizing committee. "We considered earthquakes when building those venues."
Some 660 miles to the east in Anhui province, chandeliers swayed in the lobby of the Buckingham Palace Hotel. "We've never felt anything like this our whole lives," said a hotel employee surnamed Zhu.
The massive Three Gorges dam, the world's largest about 350 miles to the east of the epicenter, was not affected, according to the information office of State Council Three Gorges Construction Committee. The area around the enormous dam remains increasingly precarious as rising waters in the reservoir have led to landslides.
Premier Wen, after arriving in Chengdu, traveled to Dujiangyan, near the collapsed high school. On his plane, he appealed for people to rally together.
"This is an especially challenging task," state TV showed Wen saying, reading from a statement. "In the face of the disaster, what's most important is calmness, confidence, courage and powerful command."
Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company
New earthquake maps show two more faults in W. Washington (April 23, 2008)
Last updated April 23, 2008 7:58 p.m. PT
By DONNA GORDON BLANKINSHIP
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
SEATTLE -- Scientists are discussing two more ways Western Washington could shake, rattle and roll.
The U.S. Geological Survey's new seismic hazard maps, released this week, show two more earthquake faults in Western Washington: one near the Canadian border, the other east of Port Angeles.
The new maps also contain some good news for Washington residents. Scientists now estimate that potential ground motion in the Western United States is 30 percent lower than they previously thought for the kind of quakes caused by long-period seismic waves that would affect taller, multistory buildings.
Scientists developed these new estimates by using new ground-motion predicting models created after looking at shaking records from 173 global shallow crustal earthquakes to better understand what is happening in the western U.S.
They believe one of the newly added faults, called the Boulder Creek fault and located near Bellingham and the Canadian border, is capable of a magnitude-6.8 earthquake and has been active over the past several thousand years. Residents of Canada are in more danger from this fault than people who live in Washington state.
The other newly added fault, the Lake Creek-Boundary Creek fault, is east of Port Angeles along the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Olympic National Park. It is capable of producing a magnitude-7.4 earthquake and has been active over the past several thousand years.
Washington and Oregon have about 100 known faults. More than 1,000 earthquakes occur in Washington each year.
The February 2001 Nisqually earthquake, which had an epicenter northeast of Olympia, was a magnitude-6.8 quake.
On the Richter scale, every increase of one number means a tenfold increase in magnitude. Thus a reading of 7.5 reflects an earthquake 10 times stronger than one of 6.5.
An earthquake of 3.5 on the Richter scale can cause slight damage in a local area, 4 can cause moderate damage, 5 considerable damage, and 6 can be severe. A 7 reading is a "major" quake, capable of widespread heavy damage, and 8 is a "great" quake, capable of tremendous damage.
The report also contains new information that a fault south of Whidbey Island is longer than previously thought, extending through Seattle's northern suburbs at least as far Woodinville and possibly southeast to North Bend. The fault has the highest hazard level of any fault in Western Washington and could produce a magnitude-7.5 earthquake. There have been at least four quakes along this fault in the past 16,000 years.
Scientists now believe the Cascadia Subduction Zone, which runs off the shore of northern California, Oregon and Washington, is more likely to experience one great quake that will completely rupture the fault, rather than the other possibility of a series of smaller, but still major, quakes.
"The primary constraint on our Cascadia earthquake model is that great earthquakes occur on average once every 500 years," cautioned Arthur D. Frankel and Mark D. Petersen, the scientists who wrote that section of the report. That makes it difficult to make predictions concerning quakes in that zone.
The last great Cascadia rupture is believed to have occurred in January 1700, based on analysis of tsunami records in Japan, trees along the Pacific coast and a study of tsunami deposits and other geophysical data, the report said.
USGS last published nationwide hazard maps in 2002 and 1996. The new maps are being released at the same time as a national revision of the model building codes used by state and local government so that buildings, bridges, highways and utilities can resist earthquake damage.
The National Seismic Hazard Maps are a series of maps and data sets that project the ground shaking that might happen at points throughout the country.
Insurance companies use the data to set rates in some places. Engineers use the maps to forecast landslides and the stability of hillsides. Federal environmental regulators use the maps to ensure waste-treatment facilities will hold up. Emergency planners use the information to decide how to allocate money for education and preparedness.
Scientists investigate rash of earthquakes off Oregon's coast (April 13, 2008)
By Jeff Barnard
Sunday, April 13, 2008
The Associated Press
GRANTS PASS, Ore. — Scientists listening to underwater microphones have detected an unusual swarm of earthquakes off central Oregon, something that often happens before a volcanic eruption — except there are no volcanoes in the area.
Scientists don't know exactly what the earthquakes mean, but they could be the result of molten rock rumbling away from the earthquake faults off Oregon, said Robert Dziak, a geophysicist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Oregon State University.
More than 600 quakes have occurred over the past 10 days in a basin 150 miles southwest of Newport. The biggest was magnitude 5.4, and two others were more than magnitude 5.0, OSU reported.
On the hydrophones, the quakes sound like low thunder and are unlike anything scientists have heard in 17 years of listening, Dziak said. Earthquake instruments on land have also detected some of the quakes.
The hydrophones are left over from a network the Navy used to listen for submarines during the Cold War. They routinely detect passing ships, earthquakes on the ocean bottom and whales calling to one another.
Scientists hope to send out an OSU research ship to take water samples, looking for evidence that sediment has been stirred up and chemicals that would indicate magma is moving up through the Juan de Fuca Plate, Dziak said.
The quakes have not followed the typical pattern of a major shock followed by a series of diminishing aftershocks, and few have been strong enough to be felt on shore.
The Earth's crust is made up of plates that rub together while resting on molten rock. When the molten rock, or magma, erupts through the crust, it creates volcanoes. That can happen in the middle of a plate. When the plates lurch against each other, they create earthquakes along the edges.
In this case, the Juan de Fuca Plate is a small piece of crust being crushed between the Pacific Plate and North America, Dziak said.
Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company
Recent Earthquakes in Our Area
Constantly updated by the USGS, this site shows recent earthquakes in our area. Graphics show the magnitude of the shaking and how recently it occurred.
You might be surprised to see how active our area is.
New Shaky Ground In Seattle (October 12, 2007)
New shaky ground in Seattle
Latest research refines what areas of the city are at greater risk of damage
By TOM PAULSON
P-I REPORTER
People and buildings in Seattle's Interbay neighborhood, northern Montlake and a large area northeast of the University of Washington appear to be at greater risk from severe shaking damage in an earthquake than previously thought, a new analysis reveals.
Some scientists believe that the new seismic hazard assessment for Seattle may cause engineers to rethink how to rebuild the Route 520 bridge and municipal officials to consider new building regulations for areas likely to be hardest hit by a quake.
"This does give us greater clarity," said Barbara Graff, director of emergency management for the city of Seattle. But the new scientific findings alone, Graff said, are unlikely to immediately prompt any push for changes in building regulations.
"Seattle already has adopted some of the strictest and most current building codes," she said. Graff said the new analysis will be used immediately to assist with public education and outreach efforts, such as the city's much-hailed home retrofitting program.
Scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey, working with colleagues at the UW, gathered various earthquake studies and data done over more than a decade. The information was used to run 540 quake simulations on a network of computers, over the equivalent of 25 days of computing time, to create what the scientists believe is one of the most sophisticated analyses ever done of a community's seismic hazard.
"It took a lot to meld all this information," said Art Frankel, project leader and a seismic mapping expert with the Geological Survey in Golden, Colo. As a result of the new approach, Frankel said, they discovered new areas of higher risk in the city.
"We had suspected that Interbay was high risk, but it hadn't been quantified before," he said. The model succeeded in confirming that the other well-known high-risk areas, such as Harbor Island and much of industrial South Seattle, will experience more violent shaking and "liquefaction" -- when the soil turns liquid -- he noted.
"We needed to do this because the area has so many different kinds of earthquake sources," Frankel said. It's still technically an experimental analysis, he said, so it's not clear yet how it will be received by policymakers or regulatory agencies.
The Puget Sound basin is at risk from three quake types: The violent, shallow and so far distantly prehistoric quakes from the likes of the Seattle Fault; the massive ones produced by the Cascadian Subduction Zone Fault off the coast (the last one was in 1700); and the deep, generally milder but more frequent ones such as the 2001 Nisqually Quake.
The "Seattle Urban Seismic Hazard Map," incorporating the site-sampling fieldwork of UW geologist Kathy Troost and many other colleagues, is based on a three-dimensional model of how all the different quakes would shake the region.
"I believe it's the first time three-dimensional simulations have been used to produce a seismic hazard map," Frankel said. The Seattle map is intended to greatly increase the ability to determine how the quake threat varies according to geology, soil type, proximity to a fault and other factors.
Tim Walsh, chief hazards geologist for the state Department of Natural Resources, said the Geological Survey's theoretical model used to create the map also revealed some surprises for what's known as the Seattle Basin -- a deep hole in the bedrock under central and South Seattle full of loose sedimentary rock.
"Using this model, they were also able to show how the seismic waves" -- the destructive forces in a quake -- "get trapped in the Seattle Basin so that the duration of the strong ground shaking, in certain areas, will be much longer than earlier predicted," Walsh said. "That's in the model but hard to show on a static map."
A related analysis also indicates the potential for a destructive tsunami on Lake Washington, based on new data showing a fault cutting across the bottom of Lake Washington from Seward Park to Mercer Island, said Craig Weaver, senior seismologist for the Geological Survey in Seattle. He said this appears to be evidence of a large major quake long ago that created a localized tsunami, or seiche, in the lake.
The size of the rupture on the lake bottom indicates that such a Lake Washington tsunami could be anywhere from 9 to 18 feet high, he said.
Patrick Clarke, chief of the state Transportation Department's design unit in charge of the Evergreen Point Bridge, said he and his colleagues are considering the new findings in light of the need to rebuild the bridge. Right now, Clarke said, the bridge would be designed to withstand a maximum 11-foot wave.
Making design and construction changes to fit a worst-case scenario may not be reasonable, he said, when the kind of quake the scientists are talking about is estimated to strike maybe every 2,500 years.
"The whole thing here becomes a probability game," Clarke said. "We need to be able to see if the probability of this thing happening warrants changing the building codes or not."
The seismic hazard map does factor in the probability of specific events. The Seattle Fault -- which actually is a series of many faults running east-west from Bremerton across Puget Sound, through Seattle and Redmond into the foothills of the Cascades -- has been estimated to produce a major quake perhaps every 1,000 years.
The Cascadian Subduction Fault, a massive fault off the coast of Washington and Oregon similar to the Sumatran Fault, which produced the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, is thought to rupture every 500 years or so. Scientists have determined that its last major quake was in January 1700. Deep quakes like the 2001 Nisqually take place maybe every 50 years.
Frankel said the new map, despite its sophistication and all the work he and his colleagues put into it, must still be viewed as an imperfect and incomplete assessment of the local seismic risk.
"You could use this for initial design considerations, but I'm not sure I'm qualified to say if they should be used for changes to the building codes," Frankel said. What he is comfortable saying, as a scientist, is that more study is definitely in the best interest of Seattle residents.
On Saturday, Frankel and other quake experts will join Graff and other officials from local, state and federal agencies at a 9:30 a.m. news conference to debut the new seismic hazard map. The event, at Lowe's Home Improvement, at 12525 Aurora Ave. N., is aimed at encouraging city residents to be prepared for disaster.
WHAT IT MEANS
Some scientists say the new Seattle seismic hazard assessment may spur changes:
Engineers may need to rethink how to rebuild the 520 bridge.
Municipal officials may need to consider new building rules for areas in the higher danger areas.
NEW HIGH RISK AREAS:
NORTHERN MONTLAKE
UNIVERSITY VILLAGE AREA
INTERBAY AREA
CASCADIA EPISODIC TREMOR AND SLIP (ETS) UNDERWAY (September 13, 2005)
Slow earthquakes affecting southern British Columbia and northern Washington have been occurring every 14 months or so over the last 10 years. The PNSN has deployed additional seismometers to record expected tremor events to gain insight into the process and into the stresses that eventually will lead to the region's next major earthquake.
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER: Seattle's readiness for disaster in doubt (Saturday, September 10, 2005)
We don't live below sea level or experience hurricanes, but Seattle -- sitting on a seismic fault believed capable of producing a massive quake -- ranks right up there with New Orleans when it comes to its risk of catastrophic natural disaster. Unfortunately, some experts say, we also share with New Orleans a tendency to delay taking some of the actions needed to reduce damage and loss of life.
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER: Denial can lead to a disaster just as easily here (Wednesday, September 7, 2005)
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER:Tsunami experts meet at UW to study disaster (Monday, June 13, 2005)
The rest of the world may give less thought these days to the Indian Ocean tsunami, but a small cadre of scientists remains fascinated, horrified and perhaps even a bit confused by the natural disaster that killed about 200,000 on Dec. 26.
Portland Oregonian: Report paints grim picture of Northwest after big quake (Wednesday May 25, 2005)
A group urges education programs and construction upgrades to help the region prepare for a catastrophe. The earthquake could be "catastrophic" and "will certainly be larger than local or regional resources can respond to," the report states. It urges that education programs teach residents and visitors how to prepare for such an earthquake; high-risk buildings be retrofitted; key buildings such as hospitals, schools and fire stations be improved to withstand the shaking; and transportation infrastructure be upgraded.
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER: Report gives fine details of potential mega-quake ( Wednesday, April 20, 2005)
On the second Tuesday in July, a massive, magnitude-9 earthquake -- much like the one that devastated Sumatra on Dec. 26 -- will be produced off the Pacific Northwest coast. But this mega-quake will be produced only in concept today at a hotel in Bellevue, by a group of scientists, engineers, planners and business leaders who want to encourage better preparation for the day when the Cascadia Subduction Fault zone erupts again.
Times Magazine 2005 Top 100: Brian Atwater -- In Search of the Great Tsunami (April 2005)
What does the scratched-up canoe that sits outside geologist Brian Atwater's Seattle home have to do with the destructive power of tsunamis? Quite a bit: it was in his canoe, paddling around the salt marshes and tidal flats of Washington State, that Atwater discovered evidence of earthquakes and giant waves of a magnitude that seemed, to many, inconceivable--until late last year, when a tsunami of similar power tore across the Indian Ocean, killing more than 200,000.
SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE: Future Shocks--Modern science, ancient catastrophes and the endless quest to predict earthquakes (March 2005)
Brian Atwater paddled a battered aluminum canoe up the Copalis River, pushed along by a rising Pacific tide. The river wound through wide salt marshes fringed with conifers growing on high ground. The scene, softened by gray winter light and drizzle, was so quiet one could hear the whisper of surf a mile away. But then Atwater rounded a bend, and a vision of sudden, violent destruction appeared before him: stranded in the middle of a marsh were dozens of towering western red cedars, weathered like old bones, their gnarly, hollow trunks wide enough to crawl into. "The ghost forest," Atwater said, pulling his paddle from the water. "Earthquake victims."
KING COUNTY JOURNAL: Quake scenario paints scary scene (March 1, 2005)
It's called the Seattle Fault but a more apt name might be the I-90 Fault since it runs more or less alongside the interstate from just north of Issaquah, 14 miles to Seattle's Harbor Island. By whatever name, however, when the next major earthquake is triggered on the fault, the consequences will be devastating, according to a scenario developed by seismologists, geologists, engineers, emergency managers, planners and others.
SEATTLE TIMES: Experts outline steps to cut quake damage (Tuesday, March 1, 2005)
There's no denying a major earthquake on the Seattle Fault would be nasty. But there are many ways to prevent a bad situation from being even worse, said several participants at an earthquake workshop yesterday in Bellevue — a scant mile from where the fault slices through the city of 117,000.
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER: Experts predict 1,600 could die in quake (Tuesday, March 1, 2005)
Puget Sound area still unprepared for such a disaster. Four years to the day after the Nisqually Quake, experts at a conference yesterday warned that most Puget Sound-area communities still are not even close to being prepared for a major quake.
SEATTLE TIMES: Pinpointing devastation if Seattle Fault ruptures (Sunday, February 20, 2005) The scenario, which will be unveiled in a daylong workshop in Bellevue on Feb. 28, uses a sophisticated computer model and the collective expertise of dozens of local engineers, scientists and emergency managers to forecast the devastation that would be wrought by a magnitude 6.7 earthquake on the Seattle Fault.
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER: 'Tsunami on its way, gonna happen any day' (Thursday, February 10, 2005)
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER: New findings super-size our tsunami threat (Monday, February 7, 2005)
NEWS RELEASE-Old Japanese Documents Confirm Warnings of Future North American Earthquakes (November 20, 2003)
Writing this week in the American Geophysical Union's Journal of Geophysical Research, scientists from Japan, Canada and the United States summarize old reports of flooding and damage by a tsunami in 1700 on the Pacific coast of Japan. With the aid of computer simulations, they conclude this tsunami required a North American earthquake close to magnitude 9. Such an earthquake, in a few minutes, would release about as much energy as the United States now consumes in a month.
The News Tribune - Tacoma, WA: Tacoma Fault poses a threat (November 3, 2003)
Researchers Sunday unveiled their first firm evidence that a Tacoma fault line exists and that it's larger than they suspected.
Now, the challenge is to home in on where the Tacoma Fault runs. In the winter, researchers will study the White River Fault near Enumclaw and whether it connects with the Tacoma Fault, Brian Sherrod of the U.S. Geological Survey told an international conference of geoscientists in Seattle.
The Tacoma Fault "adds yet another reminder that we live in an area that's prone to big earthquakes," said Sherrod, who is also affiliated with the University of Washington. "It adds another piece of the tectonic puzzle."
Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Newly found fault shakes up beliefs about regional quakes (September 10, 2003)
Using everything from a highly sophisticated airborne laser to a ground-based backhoe, scientists have found a new fault on Bainbridge Island that challenges some of their basic beliefs about the seismic time bomb that runs beneath Seattle.
"This means we need to fundamentally change our view of the geometry of the Seattle Fault," said Brian Sherrod, a field geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. What the scientists found on Bainbridge was evidence of perhaps two prehistoric earthquakes that sent up massive blocks of land -- in the wrong direction.
Seattle Times: Mysterious 1872 quake yields clues for future (July 22, 2003)
Alison Bickerstaff. Ruth Ludwin and fellow researchers at the University of Washington, including three U.S. Geological Survey scientists, say a deeper knowledge of the largest crustal earthquake in Washington state's history will help to define the risks other quakes pose east of the Cascades.
The Oregonian: Science - Landslide Sleuths (May 15,2002)
Richard Hill, The Oregonian science writer, reports on evidence that the great Bonneville landslide in the Columbia River basin, resulted from shaking during the Great Cascadia earthquake in 1700.
LIDAR Data Online March 3, 2002
LIDAR (LIght Distance And Ranging, also known as Airborne Laser Swath Mapping or ALSM) is a relatively new technology that employs an airborne scanning laser rangefinder to produce accurate topographic surveys of unparalleled detail.
