The Big One

[filkertom]

Today is the one hundredth anniversary of the most famous San Francisco Earthquake. Lotsa great links at the bottom of the page.

As we have seen the past couple of years, no place is really safe. The question is, do you feel safe enough? Have you adapted to the geography and weather where you are? To put a finer point on it, are you thinking, or have you ever thought, about moving because of meteorological/geological/atmospheric conditions where you are now? For instance, I'm not too worried about tornadoes here in S.E. Michigan... but I'm probably not going to buy a mobile home.

Comments

[trdsf.livejournal.com]

Columbus? I love it here--the weather is even less complicated than Toledo's. Storms that have dropped tornados from Des Moines to Dayton hit the outerbelt and just part like the Reed Sea for Moses--or just drop dead. Stray blizzard, about every ten years, I can deal with. No earthquakes, no mudslides, no brushfires, no hurricanes, no plagues of insects, no poisonous snakes. There's a reason I'm a Buckeye and likely to stay that way.

Now, I do remember some big storms when I lived up outside Toledo: the F4 that ate Point Place in '67 or '68--smart little me, I was down in the basement all right... with my face plastered up against the window, watching garbage cans fly by. Heck, that was back in the days when they told you to open the windows on the north side of your house before seeking shelter. The Super Outbreak in '74, that was a hell of a storm. We had a funnel cloud pass over our place here in '02 at 4.30 in the morning--it never touched down anywhere in town.

By the way, if you ever need to wake up an Iowa boy at 4.30 in the morning, just say 'tornado warning' to him. But don't do it if there really isn't one. :)

[brithistorian.livejournal.com]

Actually, I moved to where I am now (Minneapolis) in large part because of meteorological/geological/atmospheric considerations. Having grown up in southern Mississippi and spent my young adulthood in New Orleans, two of my criteria when we decided to move (we were both telecommiting at the time, so had freedom to choose to move anywhere in the country) were someplace that had four seasons (instead of the 1.5-2 that we were used to) and someplace that didn't have hurricanes. Recognizing that pretty much everywhere is prone to some sort of natural disaster, we decided we'd rather have blizzards than tornadoes or earthquakes, which helped us to finally decide on Minneapolis.

[archanglrobriel.livejournal.com]

Ah but New Mexico is the land of "nothing much ever happens" which was one of the many reasons we chose to move back here. We very rarely will get a tiny tornado, not even an F-1. We will episodically get wildfires and we have issues with drought, but generally speaking...nothing much ever happens.
As opposed to where we used to live, in Tulsa - home of the monster tornadic activity, and San Francisco...exhibit A of today's post. *laugh*

[drzarron.livejournal.com]

Just an aside, most old timers don't called it the Great Earthquake, they call it the Great Fire, cause the resulting fire did much more damage than the quake itself.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

I remember reading that. It's mostly those outside of S.F. that call it The Great Earthquake, right?

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

I admit that I think of wildfires and drought as exactly the kind of environmental problems I'm talking about. The trip out West in February really opened my eyes as to what four months of no rain will do to a place. I saw one riverbed, the Pecos, that actually had water in it between Phoenix and Pratt, KS.

[ash-blackwell.livejournal.com]

Southern Arizona is pretty quiet, /especially/ compared to Northwest Florida where I grew up. I don't have much growing in the yard (lots of rocks, not much plants) so the droughts don't effect me much and the house I'm in has been in my family for 60 years so I /know/ it is high enough up to not flood when the major washes are overflowing.

The worst I have to worry about is the mountains surrounding Tucson catching fire every 5-10 years or so which can send smoke into the city and being unable to leave my neighborhood for a few days every 10 years from the rest of the city flooding. Much better than the 10+ hurricanes that have hit Ft. Walton Beach, Fl since I left in '94!

[alicetheowl.livejournal.com]

I live in Asheville, NC, where the weather and geological conditions are mostly ideal.

Except for the hairline fault that runs under us. We have some hot springs nearby, and had a minor earthquake there last year. (3.0, or something similarly tiny.) That happens in the Appalachians, apparently.

Also, in 2003, we had a one-two punch of hurrican remnants after a rainy summer, and had some pretty bad flooding.

So, of course, we're putting MORE pavement in the flood zone.

Anyway. I plan on getting a house with a sturdy foundation (because the apartment I was staying in during the earthquake didn't, and it was startling), and I plan on looking at flood maps before putting in any offers. It's not difficult to be above the flood plain, though, in such a mountainous region. It's because there are such elevation differences that the flooding was so bad; all that water stayed in the valleys and was higher in volume where it was, so some roads were washed away entirely. If it had been spread out over a greater area, then places farther away would've been affected, but the water level wouldn't have been as high, and the current wouldn't have been so strong.

[jcbemis.livejournal.com]

We've actually moved to Florida, wanted the good westher seasons and NO COLD. We're building on the "florida ridge", about 1/2 hour west of Orlando. Hurricaines don't worry me too much - solid CBS construction done by a reputable builder (that had some water intrusion problems after the hurricaines last year, and fixed them all, whether the houses were still in warranty or not. The new roofing codes meant new roofs held up well, tho on their buildings.

[min0taur.livejournal.com]

I do think it's wise to remind ourselves that safety is always relative, especially down here at the bottom of the gravity well on a thin crust of rock stuck in amongst a restless hydrosphere, a turbulent atmosphere, and a mass of idiots-in-office who think people have no significant effect on their environment -- though the Midwest climate is cranky enough as it is. We had six inches of snow on the first day of spring, and no sooner was my car fixed from the resulting slide-and-crunch than we had golf-ball-size hail, thunderstorms, and tornadoes prowling to the west last Friday.

[archanglrobriel.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but I admit to having a preference for disasters you can see coming a lonnnnnnng way off. Rather than the kind that wake you up by jerking you out of bed or lifting the house off it's foundations. Although wildfires do scare me a bit. I used to work firelines up in the north country and saw firsthand how bad that can get.
I do worry about the water situation from time to time, although I've placed my family in a pretty neat situation about ten blocks from the Rio Grande where it gets the melt-off from Santa Fe.
The places I really worry about are places like Phoenix and Las Vegas, which are deep desert.

[archanglrobriel.livejournal.com]

On the National Geographic special they said that the re-naming of the Great Quake into the Great Fire was actually the result of a very directed and conscious manipulation/PR campaign on the part of Mayor Schmitz to downplay the earthquake part lest new businesses get scared away from building/establishing themselves in San Francisco. Fires were pretty common in big cities at the time, earthquakes were not. They actually had artists retouch photos to downplay the things that would've been quake related and make them seem fire related.

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

Well, Vegas has it's good points, but... If given a choice, I'd reather live in the Pacific Northwest.

I love the rain.

[palenoue.livejournal.com]

When my job moved to Seattle, I jumped at the chance to move with it, even though I probably would have been better off in Spokane. One of the main reasons was snow. Spokane has cold, snowy winters (no blizzards, and it lasts quite a while) while Seattle only gets one day of snow, maybe, once every three or four years. I just got sick of walking in snow over icy sidewalks.

The other reason is that Spokane strives to be as brain-dead as possible. Best example of this, they _voted_down_ a FREE science center! For increadibly stupid reasons! And the guy who started the anti-science center movement did so just he could keep his cushy job for six more months (his contract would have ended early if the center started construction). And when news of his reason got out, nobody cared! I couldn't wait to leave after that.

[partiallyclips.livejournal.com]

Things have not been fun in D.C. I was about 10 miles from the Pentagon on 9/11. Then we had the anthrax...delivered to buildings I used to work at, my father used to work at, and my then-fiancee used to work at (talking of three different locations). Then we had the snipers. We have had a regular patrol of Black Hawks overhead, circling the Beltway 24/7, for 4 years. They fly over my apartment complex and set off the car alarms. We get scares and evacuations of one Federal building or another at least once a month. We have a thousand little reminders everywhere you look that this city is a target, from big blocky barricades, to Humvees pointing .50 caliber guns into traffic near the Pentagon, to not being able to leave your seat on flights in and out of Reagan National.

Thought of moving? I read the Toronto Star classifieds like some people build their Amazon Wishlist.

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't move anywhere with regular seismic activity except at dire need. Storms I don't mind--in fact, I'd be sad to live anywhere that didn't get good thunderstorms.

Tornadoes

[nezmaster.livejournal.com]

When I was a kid (age 10), we were driving around for the worst tornado in Louisville History (april 14th 1974). I watched funnel clouds go by. The lcoal park still has not entirely recovered.

Since then, I've lived through i don't know how many tornadoes, some of which are pretty close. I remember when I was fifteen, I was in a mall when a tornado warning occured, all teh stores closed, and they 'rounded us up' to the middle of the mall. I started to walk out the door. A security guard said "I'm sorry you can't leave"....my response...

"So you want me to go into the middle of a building where I can't see out with a bunch of people I don't know when there is a deep ditch and a creek 60 yards that way (which there was)...No."

"I can't let you leave"

"You can't stop me short of physical force, and I'll charge you wtih kidnapping, assault and I don't know what else, I am NOT staying here."

I left, and rode my bike home. Tornaodes hit near the mall. I was home by then.

For the most part i think the fear of some kinds of disasters is overrated. This is why I know I'd have been in New Orleans for Katrina if I lived there. The fear mongering press can not impress me with danger. I just don't believe them anymore.

It's important to mention that not very many people die in tornadoes, even the really bad ones. Just people who live in trailer parks and take no precautions at all. So no I've never considered moving for weather reasons. I have considered moving becuase i hate where I live, but that's another matter.

Where I move too however is different. I am more afraid of earthquakes than hurricanes, more afraid of hurricanes than tornadoes, but that's mostly because I didn't grow up riding my bike through them. :)

You wouldn't want to live in the Mid-South, then :)

[pickledcritter.livejournal.com]

We get the best(?) of *all* worlds here in Memphis - we're near enough to the New Madrid fault that some doom'n'gloomies predict as much as a 60% loss of the city should another 8 or 9 quake hit New Madrid. In addition, we're right in the heart of tornado country (surprisingly, we get more tornados per square mile here than places like Iowa or Nebraska, but theirs are usually bigger).

[daundelyon.livejournal.com]

*chuckles* When I was at OSU, one of my professors actually had our Wednesday class moved to a different room so that we wouldn't be interupted by the 12 o'clock tornado siren tests. PTB help us if a tornado ever actually touches down at 12 on a Wednesday...

[dragonscholar.livejournal.com]

I just MOVED to the Bay Area. Being on the inside is pretty interesting.

The people know its coming. Some respond, some don't. Some plan, some don't. There's a LOT of contingency planning and building codes in place, even if it doesnt affect some old buildings. So people are ready as they can be and they go on.

I feel as safe as I can, pretty much. *I* am prepared and the government and hospitals seem reasonably ready after 1989.

What amuses me is the sensationalism around it. I see reports on how MORE people could die if there's a Big One (yes, because population is denser), 5% of buildings may not withstand a quake (much higher than the original survival rate of buildings). People could lose power for days (hey, break from work).

But in the Bay Area . . . people go on about life.

[trdsf.livejournal.com]

There used to be--and maybe still is--an organization in California dedicated to "getting it over with". Every morning at 7am, every member would climb up on a chair and jump down on the ground, in hopes of shaking things loose and having a smaller "big one".

Only in California...

[sylverwolfe.livejournal.com]

in the ohio valley, flooding comes to mind. kane's shown me some of the high water marks from past floods...scary. the area of louisville i live in is far enough from the river that i'm not too worried about the house, but work is about 4 blocks from the waterfront, so i've got about ten alternate routes home plotted out in case i need to avoid high water. tornadoes tend to swerve around my section of the city, too, but i'm not betting on that remaining the case. and of course, there are caves networked under most of the state, so sinkholes, cave-ins, and whatnot are possible. i think there are some fault lines in them thar hills, too.
huh. i left new orleans for this? syracuse to new orleans was supposed to be moving into the danger zone. now that i think about it, no place is really 100% safe from mother nature's hissy fits. maybe the moon.

[trdsf.livejournal.com]

Meteors. No atmosphere to stop 'em or slow 'em down, so even the tiny ones are Very Bad Things. Glad to be of service. ;)

[marahsk.livejournal.com]

Toronto doesn't get hurricanes, earthquakes, mudslides, tornadoes, wildfires, or floods. We do get some snow, though, and summers are humid. Could be worse. :)