Disaster Safety Blog

New Madrid quake activity signals need for preparation

The New Madrid fault line has been rumbling again. And while an earthquake expert says the recent series of small quakes isn't unusual, it is a reminder of what the active fault is capable of, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports today.

Four small quakes have been centered near New Madrid in southeast Missouri in the past week, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The largest was a magnitude 3.1 quake on Friday that was felt in parts of Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee and Kentucky. No damage was reported. The others were a magnitude 1.7 on Dec. 15, a magnitude 1.3 on Dec. 16 and a magnitude 1.4 on Friday.

Robert Hermann of the Earthquake Center at Saint Louis University said a quake large enough to be felt happens about once a month in the region, and quakes with magnitude 2.0 and smaller happen on an almost daily basis.

In fact, according to a map on the Web site for the Center for Earthquake Research and Information in Memphis, Tenn., 15 earthquakes have occurred along or near the fault this month alone, including four on Friday. Only three were above a magnitude 2.0.

The fault line is best known for some of the most violent earthquakes to ever hit the U.S., a series of four in 1811 and 1812. The quakes were estimated at magnitude 7.5 to 8.0, so strong the Mississippi River reportedly flowed backward. Damage occurred as far away as Washington, D.C., and Charleston, S.C.
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Experts have long debated whether the fault line is capable of producing another major earthquake. Hermann isn't willing to bet that it won't, saying there's too much at stake to become complacent.

"Some argue that 1811 and 1812 were one-shot affairs, but it's prudent not to ignore that possibility, and it's prudent to take whatever steps are possible to prepare," he said.

Preparing for an earthquake can be as simple as anchoring cabinets, strapping down a water heater or using museum putty to secure valuables on shelves. Learn more with help from the Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS). Download a free earthquake preparedness guide. 

Roof collapse warnings issued for the East Coast

Residents along the Eastern seaboard, who have been digging out from piles of a snow left behind by a winter storm last week, can expect heavy rains for the remainder of this week.
If your home or business has a flat roof that still has snow on it, be advised that rain can make the existing home heavier and expose the roof to the potential for collapse.

State emergency officials from Delaware to Maine are encouraging snow removal. Contact a roofing professional for assistance or take the proper safety precautions before attempting to clear a roof. It is also important to keep gutters and other roof drains clear of debris that could prevent proper drainage of the melting snow.

The Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) offers guidelines for determining when a roof is in danger of collapse. View the guidelines and take steps today to reduce your risk of roof collapse.

 

Upper Midwest braces for powerful storm, blizzard conditions

A powerful winter storm is expected to slam the Upper Midwest later this afternoon and could result in the most severe blizzard conditions seen in South Dakota in the last 40 years, the National Weather Service warned today.

"We probably haven't seen a storm of this magnitude in South Dakota in at least the last decade and perhaps back to 1968," Greg Harmon, the meteorologist in charge at the National Weather Service's Sioux Falls office, told USA Today.

On Dec. 21 and 22, 1968, 10 inches of powdery snow covered much of South Dakota. Snow drifts measuring 10 feet high were reported after the powder was blown by winds of up to 50 mph, according to historical accounts of that storm from the National Weather Service in Aberdeen, S.D.

The Weather Service is forecasting 15 to 18 inches of snow in Sioux Falls, with even higher amounts possible locally. Combine that with winds gusting to 30 to 35 miles per hour on Thursday and 40 to 45 miles per hour on Friday, and snow drifts will be measured in feet, not inches.

The storm also was expected to dump more than a foot of snow on parts of Colorado and southern Utah by midday, and blow east into the Plains states through Christmas Day. Blizzard warnings were likely on Christmas Eve in Kansas.

In Nebraska, the central third of the state was covered with freezing rain and snow had begun to fall by this morning.

South Dakota has 500 plows and crews statewide and larger equipment stationed in urban areas. Typically the state can move equipment around to fight isolated storms, but this one is expected to affect the entire state.

Get prepared for severe winter weather with help from the Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS).

New tsunami maps can aid preparation in California

On Saturday, the fifth anniversary of the powerful tsunami that killed 225,000 people in Southeast Asia will be remembered. The vulnerability demonstrated by this devastating natural disaster should serve as a lesson for other coastal communities that have potential tsunami exposure.

Californians now have a new tool to help them better understand their risks. The California Emergency Management Agency, the California Geological Survey, and the Tsunami Research Center at the University of Southern California produced the new series of tsunami inundation maps. There are a total of 130 maps that cover 20 counties and are based on the most up-to-date data and methodologies.

Researchers said the maps were created to help emergency planners identify at-risk areas and plan for coastal evacuation and should not be used to set insurance rates or engineering standards.

There have been six tsunamis that have caused destruction along the California coast since 1812, according to state records. As the Southeast Asia tsunami illustrated, it only takes a single event to cause widespread damage, and the rebuilding process can take years. Nearly two million people were displaced when the tsunami hit, hundreds of thousands of homes were destroyed, and the area suffered tens of billions of dollars in economic losses.

Read more about your risks. View the new California maps.

Don't let an earthquake turn your life upside down

A new art exhibit delves into the personal losses associated with the aftermath of an earthquake, MinnPost.com reports today.

The exhibition Quake/Temblor: A Forensics of Interior Life and Natural Disaster by Susannah Bielak is on display through Jan. 16 at Bethel University's Johnson Gallery in St. Paul, Minn. The multimedia installation includes video, drawings, prints, photography and engravings. View a photo gallery. 

Here is what MinnPost.com says about the exhibit:

"Quake/Temblor" is a perceptive but unsentimental reminder of just how closely our individual fates are tied with that of the natural world around us. It's well worth a visit to the gallery to see this show for yourself."

"The project," Bielak writes in her artist statement, "joins spaces of scientific testing, public memory, and private history — making reference to the Richter Scale, the broken city, and the kitchen table. Quake/Temblor aims to make visible some of what lies between everyday family life and the experience of an earthquake."

The installation is a composite creation, an archive of sorts recording both the geographic and human toll of large-scale natural disaster — using photographic and historical records of the 1985 quake, performative re-enactments (on video) of the event itself, and ingenious engraved pieces and prints, for which she's carved scenes of destruction on ordinary Formica kitchen tabletops.

Bielak describes going through old family photos one day and finding among them slides of the horrific aftermath of Mexico City's massive 1985 earthquake, all taken by her father. A civil engineer whose family roots lay in Mexico City, Bielak's father returned to his native home to document the quake's effects. She remarks that when she stumbled upon her father's photos, the juxtaposition of her family's intimate snapshots with images of such large-scale destruction was "destabilizing, pushing me to question the issue of terra firma in daily life."

It is possible to minimize the damage caused by earthquakes. Learn how with help from the Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS).

Remembering the deadly Tuscaloosa tornado

It has been nine years since a deadly tornado devastated Tuscaloosa County, Ala., as a result of a supercell storm originating in Mississippi. This supercell was strongest in an outbreak of storms that stretched from Mississippi to North Carolina.

Dozens of homes, businesses and a school were damaged.The path of the tornado was 750 yards wide and 18 miles long, with estimated wind speeds of 207 mph to 260 mph. The National Weather Service determined the tornado to be an F4 on the Fujita Storm Intensity Scale.

When it was over, whole frame houses were leveled, leaving piles of debris; steel structures were badly damaged, and cars and trains were thrown around. The storm killed 11 people, and injured another 144. Property damage estimates were around $12.5 million.

This tornado is remembered as being the strongest December tornado in Alabama since records were first kept in 1950, and is tied with one other storm to be the second deadliest December tornado in the United States.

Learn how to minimize tornado damage with information from the Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS).

Nebraska rattled by rare earthquake

Southeastern Nebraska residents were rattled by a minor earthquake Wednesday night, the U.S.Geological Survey (USGS) reports. Earthquakes are uncommon in the state.

The USGS reported the 3.5 magnitude quake struck at 8:53 p.m. and was centered two miles north-northwest of Auburn.The quake was felt by people in several nearby Nebraska towns, including Peru, Nebraska City, Brock, Tecumseh, and across the Missouri River in Hamburg, Iowa.

Though not known for its earthquakes, Nebraska has experienced several notable shakes since its founding as a state in 1867. The USGS says the most serious of them was a magnitude 5.1 quake on Nov. 15, 1877, in the east-central part of the state.

The majority of damage caused by minor earthquakes occurs in a home's interior, where valuable electronics such as wall-mounted flat screen televisions can shift and often come dislodged. Appliances such as water heaters can topple, spilling water onto the floor and damaging surrounding furnishings and other valuables.

Learn how to secure the interior of your home or business with information from the Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS). Download a free guide today.

Rising waters threaten properties in greater New Orleans

Record-setting rainfall in the greater New Orleans area flooded streets and forced some residents into emergency shelters on Tuesday.

Rain gauges at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport reported 22.26 inches of rain by mid-day Tuesday, according to Louisiana climatologist Barry Keim at Lousiana State University. He said that's the heaviest monthly rainfall recorded at the airport, where records have been kept since 1946. And it was within striking distance of the monthly record for the New Orleans metropolitan area, 25.11 inches, set in October 1937.

More rain is in the forescast for Thursday, bringing more water to already saturated ground. In Lafourche Parish, southwest of New Orleans, there were isolated reports of homes flooding in Raceland, Bayou Blue and north Thibodaux, according to local government reports. Parish officials opened an emergency shelter at the Raceland Recreation Center for anyone needing to evacuate.

In St. Charles Parish, where public schools were closed Tuesday because of standing water on roads, a section of a small levee in the town of Boutte was overtopped, according to USA Today.

Keeping rising waters and wind-driven rain out of you home or business is the first step toward preventing widespread property damage to the drywall, floors and valuables stored at floor level, according to the Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS). Learn more about minimizing flood damage with help from IBHS engineers.

Natural disasters are responsible for 90 percent of economic losses worldwide

The annual number of weather-related disasters has increased about seven-fold since the 1970s and these types of incidents are now responsible for 90 percent of economic-related losses worldwide, according to a new report released by the the Center for Research on Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), a branch of the United Nation's World Health Organization (WHO).

Although natural disasters claimed the smallest annual toll in human life and economic loss in a decade in 2009, the causes of these disasters continued to be overwhelmingly climate related, the U.N. reported Monday. Therefore, the public should be warned against a false sense of security from the temporary decline.

"If you pull back and look at the trends over a much longer period, starting in the 1970s, you will see a very serious increase in the total number of natural disasters - about seven-fold," said CRED director Debarati Guha Sapir in a news release. "The portion of those that are weather-related is steadily increasing and is now consistently above 90 percent."

Some 58 million people have been affected by 245 natural calamities so far this year, more than 90 percent of them weather events amplified by climate change, according to the preliminary figures.

Just over 8,900 people have been killed by disasters of all kinds, with 80 percent of those deaths climate-related, according to the CRED report.

"Statistics this year show lower figures compared to previous years, which is good news for people and countries," said Margareta Wahlstrom, UN Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction told journalists in Copenhagen, where UN climate talks are under way. "However, extreme weather disasters remain at the top of the list and will continue to affect more people in the future as more than half of the world's population highly exposed is living in coastal regions."

Prepare your property for a natural disaster with help from the Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS). Thinking of "going green" to reduce your contribution to the changing climate? Learn why it's important for a building to be as durable as it is green.

New climate report has dire warnings for coastal areas

A new report released during the first week of climate meetings (Dec. 7-18) in Copenhagen, Denmark, predicts a significant rise in sea levels by 2100 and calls for action by 2012 in order to have any effect on the changing climate.

The report, which was composed by a group of 26 climatologists, is a summary of hundreds of peer-reviewed research papers published in the last several years. The Copenhagen Diagnosis supersedes a 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that has been the standard for reference on climate statistics since its publication. Fourteen of the climatologists who compiled the Copenhagen Diagnosis were also authors of the 2007 IPCC report.

If we apply the predictions coming from the report to the topography of the Gulf Coast then 10 percent of Florida and Louisiana will be under water by 2100, says Sally Kneidel, Ph.D., who is the author of eleven books on nature, conservation and science topics. 

 
  The new evidence in the report includes:

• Satellite and direct measurements now demonstrate that both the Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheets are losing mass and contributing to sea level rise at an increasing rate.
• Arctic sea-ice has melted far beyond the expectations of climate models. For example, the area of summer sea-ice melt during 2007-2009 was about 40 percent greater than the average projection from the 2007 IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.
• Sea level has risen more than 5 centimeters over the past 15 years, about 80 percent higher than IPCC projections from 2001. Accounting for ice-sheets and glaciers, global sea-level rise may exceed 1 meter by 2100, with a rise of up to 2 meters considered an upper limit by this time. This is much higher than previously projected by the IPCC. Furthermore, beyond 2100, sea level rise of several meters must be expected over the next few centuries.
• In 2008 carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels were ~40 percent higher than those in 1990. Even if emissions do not grow beyond today’s levels, within just 20 years the world will have used up the allowable emissions to have a reasonable chance of limiting warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius.

The report concludes that global emissions must peak then decline rapidly within the next five to ten years for the world to have a reasonable chance of avoiding the very worst impacts of climate change.

To stabilize climate, global emissions of carbon dioxide and other long-lived greenhouse gases need to reach near-zero well within this century, the report states.

According to the Copenhagen climatologists, by the end of this century global sea levels will rise at least twice as much as earlier predicted by the IPCC. If heat-trapping emissions are not reduced, the rise will be 1 to 2 meters by the year 2010. And they will keep on rising for centuries, for a total of several meters - even if global temperatures have been stabilized.

How might this affect Florida?

What will happen in Florida when sea levels rise?  Frank Ackerman, a senior economist at the Stockholm Institute, has studied that question with computer modeling. His model projects a 27-inch rise by the year 2060, just 50 years from now.

About Florida, Ackerman says, "Our map of the area vulnerable to 27 inches of sea-level rise looks like someone took a razor to the state right above Miami and sliced off everything below that, [which includes] residential real estate worth $130 billion in that, half of Florida's beaches, two nuclear reactors, three prisons, 37 nursing homes, and on and on."

The porous limestone on which much of South Florida is built makes the area unsuitable for levees, like those built in New Orleans and the Netherlands. It will be up to individuals to protect their properties. Research by the Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) has found the only ways to truly protect coastal properties from storm surge are proper elevation - 2 percent above the annual probability of exceedance levels - and by choosing the right interior finishes - wood over drywall - to minimize interior damage when water does get inside a structure. Learn more about IBHS property protection guidelines.

Dr. Hal Wanless, chairman of Geological Sciences at the University of Miami, says that rising sea levels come right up through the limestone, as was proved during Hurricane Betsy. "There's no way to put a levee around South Florida and really keep the water out."