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Press Article: April 29, 2004
What Happens In Murray,
Kentucky
When A Giant Earthquake Strikes?
An Analysis by Sam Penny
The town of Murray, county seat
of Calloway County, sits 51 seconds away from the New Madrid
Fault. That is how long it took for the terrible shaking of the
first of three giant earthquakes on December 16, 1811 to reach
the wooded hills of Kentucky along the East Fork of Clarks River,
fourteen miles west of where Blood River joined the Tennessee.
The land claimed by the Chickasaw
Indians shook violently for over seventy seconds at an intensity
measuring VIII on today's Modified Mercalli Intensity Scale,
sufficient to tangle the limbs of trees enough to break some
and strong enough to slough off any overhanging banks along the
sides of the rivers. There was little damage and there were few,
if any, casualties amongst the natives and frontiersmen camped
around the region.
In today's Calloway County the
damage from level VIII shaking will be orders of magnitude greater;
greater because you now find over twenty thousand man-made structures
in the county to be destroyed - structures like bridges, water
towers, businesses, office buildings, schools, firehouses, homes,
granaries, and more. Any poorly built structure will be totally
destroyed; ordinary substantial buildings will suffer significant
damage, often with a partial collapse; damage will be slight
only in structures specially designed to withstand seismic shaking.
How many specially designed buildings
does Murray have? Concerns about building for seismic safety
did not arise until the 1970s, and many of the buildings throughout
Murray show their earlier heritage. Taller buildings, especially
the nine and twelve story dormitories at the University, would
be particularly vulnerable to intense shaking lasting for over
a minute.
Acceleration of the ground from
the shaking beneath your feet throughout the county will be as
high as one-third of gravity, making it difficult to maintain
your balance. Panel walls will be thrown out of frame structures.
Chimneys, factory stacks, columns, monuments, concrete block
walls, anything built of stone will probably collapse or fall.
Heavy furniture will be overturned. Unsecured water heaters,
stoves, refrigerators, and bookshelves will fall over, perhaps
tearing their gas and electrical connections apart. Sand and
mud will be ejected in small amounts along the river and creek
bottoms. Persons driving cars will even feel the shaking and
their vehicles may be thrown off the side of the road or bridge.
Today the population of Calloway
County is over 35,000, swelled by thousands more during the school
term of Murray State University. Today an earthquake the size
of the December 16, 1811 event could result in more than 25 deaths
and 125 injuries. Over a third of the population would be forced
from their homes or apartments or dormitories by damage from
the initial shaking. Continuing aftershocks would injure more
and inhibit recovery efforts.
Damage will not be limited to
Calloway County. Estimates are that such an earthquake could
kill upwards to 80,000 people across the country, injure over
300,000 and leave over six million people homeless, most of these
in the seven states nearest the New Madrid Fault, which includes
Kentucky. Such a great earthquake could destroy over ten percent
of the United States Gross Domestic Product, plunging our country
into the worst depression it has ever seen.
Many residents of Calloway County
know that earthquakes ravaged this area 193 years ago, and they
remember when a repeat was predicted 14 years ago - but nothing
happened. Some decided the repeat will never happen, but the
failure of that prediction did not change the chances for another
earthquake - it is still inevitable. We just do not know when.
The United States Geological
Service estimates the probability for a great earthquake on the
New Madrid Fault in the next fifty years between magnitude 7.5
and 8.0 to be 7 to 10%, roughly the same odds as blowing your
brains out playing Russian Roulette with a twelve-shot revolver.
It may sound like a hopeless
cause, but what you do now can make a difference; contingency
and mitigation planning are vital.
Contingency planning means to
prepare for an earthquake: maintain a supply of emergency water
and food, have a plan for how the family gets together after
a disaster, teach children how to keep safe, make sure you understand
your community's emergency relief plan and volunteer to be a
part of it. Sounds a lot like being prepared for a tornado, so
it helps all the way around.
Mitigation planning means to
soften the blow of an earthquake: strap your hot water heater
to the wall, install an automatic shutoff on your gas lines,
bolt your house to its foundations, support higher building standards,
learn whatever you can about earthquakes, how they happen, and
what they do. Learn how you can influence your community and
how to teach our society to practice safe living. Sounds a lot
like common sense.
Remember, whether an earthquake
happens next week or fifty years in the future or two hundred
years from now, planning may save your life or the life of your
grandchildren when the inevitable happens once again. It can
also go a long way towards keeping our country from falling into
oblivion because its citizens and government were simply not
prepared.
Sam Penny is a retired scientist
and engineer turned author and lecturer who has studied in detail
the effects of the next great New Madrid earthquake on the population
and economy of the central United States. He has chosen to illustrate
his studies in fiction form to reach the wider public audience.
His novel Memphis 7.9, What happens WHEN, not IF, a great earthquake
strikes the New Madrid Fault Zone, just 45 miles from Memphis,
Tennessee, is now available on-line at selected bookstores and
at www.the79scenario.com.
Memphis 7.9 and Broken River
are available on-line from the author's website at www.the79scenario.com.
The books are also available from www.amazon.com, www.booksurge.com,
and in selected bookstores around the country.
# # #
Penny is traveling throughout
the eastern half of the country on an extended book tour and
is available for questions and radio/TV interviews by telephone.
Review copies are available for the media upon request. |
