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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Grainne who wrote (92277)	1/1/2005 12:40:05 AM
From: Grainne	Respond to of 108807

I know that most scientists do not believe that an earthquake in one part of the world affects other earthquake zones far, far away. I have never really understood why, though, because it seems logical that if there are interlocking teutonic plates pushing against each other, earthquakes on different continents could be caused. Anyway, this article is about the coming HUGE earthquake in the American midwest. I have been reading about this since I was a girl, and it has never happened, but I am hopeful that awareness will help save lives: Posted on Fri, Dec. 31, 2004 Kansas scientist warns quake will devastate Plains BY ROY WENZL The Wichita Eagle Rick Miller heard the reports from the Indian Ocean, where people are burying tens of thousands of their dead. And he thought of what will happen here someday. Someday, perhaps not that far in the future, perhaps tomorrow, the swarm of fault lines buried under New Madrid, Mo., will go boom again. Miller, a seismologist with the Kansas Geological Survey in Lawrence, has spent a career studying earthquakes. The New Madrid quakes of 1811 and 1812 are an old story that could make news again any day. Scientists say those quakes would have registered about 8.1 on today's scales. That's only one-tenth as bad as what struck the Indian Ocean. But big enough that the Mississippi River ran backward for a while. Big enough that the soil in the Mississippi River valley liquefied in places; horses sank up to their chests in what seconds before had been solid ground. Church bells rang in Boston, 1,000 miles away. A major quake is going to happen again someday. Maybe 50 years from now; maybe tomorrow. Some scientists say we might be overdue. The difference this time is that we've built a North American civilization on top of the continent since 1811. If those quakes occur at 8.1 tomorrow, most of the buildings in Memphis will be destroyed, along with much of St. Louis. Major structures in Chicago, hundreds of miles to the north, will topple. Many of the bridges spanning the Mississippi will fall into the river, or be shut down for inspection. That will cut much of the country's transportation and communication system in half. We're not safe, even in Kansas. Those 1811-1812 quakes, many hundreds of miles away, no doubt rattled many of the few cabins and teepees and Indian huts standing in our river valleys back then. "There weren't many cabins in Kansas back then, but there's no doubt that a lot of the mud daubing in between the logs came falling down into the middle of the room," Miller said. "Today you'd see Sheetrock splitting and foundations cracking all across Kansas," he said. "You'd see a few chimneys toppling." What's worse would be the disaster to follow in the weeks to come. Because we live in a complex civilization, so dependent on transportation and communication, it would be a disaster for North America almost unimaginable. It won't destroy 60 percent of Wichita like it will destroy 60 percent of Memphis, but it will disrupt our food and power supplies and probably create a deep sense of insecurity, lasting a long time. We think we live on a safe and solid rock floating in space, Miller said. But we don't. The Earth flexes. The crust shifts. The quake that killed all those people along the shorelines of the Indian Ocean was so strong that it shook the world, moved the island of Sumatra 100 feet and distorted the orbit of the Earth around the sun. "The entire planet is flexing now," he said. "We just can't see or feel it because we live in our little corner of the world and can't see the whole thing." There's not much most of us can do about this. There's a lot that some people have done for decades. Bridge builders and building construction engineers have worked hard for decades to build things that won't tumble down when the big one comes. About the only thing the rest of us can do is be aware: The big one will come someday, Miller said. Perhaps sooner rather than later. kansas.com