Unlike Weather, the Ability to Predict Earthquakes Has Not Improved Much
In more than 17 years working at The Los Angeles Times, possibly the single-most controversial editorial decision we made was to publish a detailed, commissioned map of Southern California most earthquake-prone areas, reflecting fault lines, local soil conditions and population density.
The response, led by the real estate industry and homeowners in those areas that scientists had considered most at risk, was on par with what we now see as election denial and resistance to climate change information. In Southern California, concern for real estate trumps just about everything except new cars, beach access and ever-present racial tensions.
We all have seen the same response with information about building in hurricane-prone zones in Florida or Texas or area around the country that flood easily. Why we build and rebuild in areas where we know there will be problems remains a profit-incented logic mystery.
It’s the power of denialism that says stuff happens – it won’t happen to me. Probably.
The conspiracy targets in Southern California were the elite eggheads who study patterns of tremors along with The Times for talking about the worst-kept secret in Los Angeles – that the city is built along crossing lines of tectonic plate intersections that are almost constantly shifting ever so slightly. Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey, among other agencies, regularly bury sensors in the ground to learn more about quake patterns, causes and how possibly to warn residents before there is another instance of widespread disaster.
For those who thankfully have never been near an earthquake, the sheer terror of the ground suddenly shaking enough to make standing impossible is difficult to explain. If it is a big one – which we experienced more than once while in Los Angeles — there can be a roar that goes on for what seem endless minutes along with sudden disorientation, a scramble to the nearest doorframe or outdoors, and immediate protective thoughts for children.
The images of the 7.8 magnitude quake in Turkey and Syria with its collapsing buildings, over 17,000 dead and scenes of rescue attempts are enough to trigger memories of quakes small and large. The Turkey-Syria earthquake was hundreds of times more powerful on the logarithmic scale that measures the size of quakes than the strongest we felt in Southern California.
To be in a tall building – even one built to top building code standards – during a quake is to experience wide swaying that prompts prayer; to be suddenly awakened by a totally familiar shaking is alarming at best.
Measuring Quakes
As every journalist in California learns, while each whole number increase in magnitude represents a tenfold increase in the measured amplitude, the magnitude represents 32 times more energy release. Oversimply, the more energy released from the movement of tectonic plates, the more destruction.
Of course, most journalists claim mathematical ignorance and just want to know if freeways and buildings have fallen and whether people have been killed or injured.
Magnitude is only one measure. Scientists also want to know whether movement is side to side or up and down, its epicenter and the distance from population, the qualities of the surrounding terrain.
Mexico City, for example, sits in what amounts to a flat pit that shakes like jelly in a quake. Apart from its surrounding mountains, Southern California is basically a flat near desert that sends ripples far even if the magnitude is small; there are hundreds of quakes each month, most, of course, relatively tiny.
In Turkey and Syria, there’s a lot of coverage of the devastation, but less about what happened. This was a relatively shallow quake at 4 a.m. local time that was near populated areas, but with enough magnitude that distance likely would not have mattered. Even the aftershocks reflected huge magnitudes. A quake of the same magnitude near populated sections of Southern California might have similar effects – even in an area that prepares for it with fortified building codes and drills.
Southern Turkey and northern Syria are in an earthquake hot spot where three tectonic plates — the Arabian, Anatolian, and African plates — meet and keep moving by millimeters each year. Friction from that kind of intersection is released as seismic tremors. This quake likely was a strike-slip fault, a fracture in the Earth’s crust where the rocks slide past each other horizontally when they break.
Predicting Quakes or Not
As The Washington Post, among others, noted, while weather forecasting has improved over the years with technology, predicting earthquakes has not.
Earthquakes account for nearly half of all deaths from natural disasters over almost two decades, according to the World Health Organization. You would think we would be working harder on prediction.
Perhaps the best sensor-based system we have, called ShakeAlert from the USGS can send a notification to phones roughly 20 seconds to a minute before an earthquake. It’s not going to help a region the size of the Turkey-Syria quake.
Basically, scientists have studied the location of faults and reams of historical data about patterns. But that has been a mostly futile pursuit over decades. The best we seem able to do is to notice tremor activity through sensors, analyze it instantly against patterns to send a warning to phones in the likeliest target zone. The system depends on the idea that electronic signals work a lot faster than the slow-moving earth plate movement.
Randomness of earthquakes and the still dearth of information about fault status make reliable predictions a crapshoot. Scientists are now looking at what artificial intelligence can bring to the problem.
The only good news is that Republicans have not yet blamed Joe Biden for an earthquake a half-globe away.
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