Ever since Japan's quake every politician is jumping on the band wagon of getting rid of nuclear powerplants or earthquake preparedness. Japan is the most prepared nation on the planet and yet we all saw what happened. There really is no preparedness that can take place as no one knows the effects and damage that will occur during a earthquake. What roads will be destroyed, what water services if any will be available, gas lines broken, electrical lines destroyed, buildings collapsed etc etc. There is no way of knowing what to expect, so how can a safety plan be developed? BTW there is a giant fault line running down Second Avenue andmultiple faults that criss cross New York and Jersey not to mention a great fault runs down the entire East Coast. At some point a major quake WILL happen.
Preparing for the Day the Earth MovesYana Paskova for The New York Times
The Office of Emergency Management in Brooklyn.
By ARIEL KAMINER
Published: March 19, 2011
It’s not the San Andreas, but it’s something: Running along 125th Street, through layers of schist, lies Manhattan’s own fault line. In 2001, it shook the Upper East Side with a magnitude-2.4 tremor.
Last year, a quake 80 miles into the waters off the East End of Long Island registered 3.9.
Events like that are a reminder, or should be, that the Earth never rests, not even in the city that never sleeps. A 2008 study by scientists at Columbia University surveyed seismic activity over the past three centuries and warned that the New York area was at “substantially greater” risk of a 6- or 7-magnitude earthquake than previously thought.
Six or 7 on the Richter scale would still be a far cry from the 9.0 that shook Japan. Still, in a city this crowded, with this many buildings nestled against one another and a nuclear reactor 35 miles away, any big shaking could have a big impact. That same Columbia study estimated that a magnitude-7.0 earthquake could cause 6,705 deaths across the region.
New York City’s provisions for such a disaster, part of its “all hazards plan,” begin with gathering representatives of every relevant agency to meet at 165 Cadman Plaza East, in Brooklyn, in the Office of Emergency Management’s war room. Spare and sterile, with computer screens pointing in every direction, the room looks like a high-tech conference center, far more NASA than City Hall. It’s there that the delegates, perhaps 150 of them, would assess the disaster’s scope and how to communicate with the public.
By the second day, their regional and national counterparts would join in, in person or electronically, for a total of 300 to 400 people. “The biggest piece is to break the job down into E.S.F.’s,” said the deputy commissioner, Kelly McKinney, referring to Emergency Service Functions like police, fire, power, transit, water and fatality management. How exactly does that work? He was reluctant to get too specific. “We have a robust plan, but the mass fatality plan is a detailed plan and the details are pretty graphic,” he said.
As the days rolled on, the experts in the war room, like the first responders in the field, would start to be hampered by their own fatigue. “They do cease to be functional,” Mr. McKinney said, “and some people will resist sleep.” One of emergency management’s functions is to make sure key people take breaks to sleep, in hotels or in tents, depending on the scope of the damage.
A vertical city might seem like the worst possible place to experience an earthquake, but New York has a lot going for it. Most important, it is nowhere near the edge of a tectonic plate. But beyond that, much of it is built on rock, and when it comes to seismic activity, rock is good; soft ground is bad.
“The earthquake releases energy,” said Ramon Gilsanz, a structural engineer in New York. “If a building is on rock, it does not re-amplify the energy. If you were sitting on something soft, on fill material, it’s like Jello. It amplifies.”
Even skyscrapers, precarious as they may look, have an advantage over many lower buildings. Their steel frames are light and flexible, allowing them to wiggle rather than crack. Which is part of why the New York City Area Consortium for Earthquake Loss Management rated the Upper East Side, with all its lovely town houses, as the Manhattan neighborhood at greatest risk from seismic activity.
“If you really want to limit damage,” said Guy Nordenson, a structural engineer who has been involved in the city’s earthquake planning for many years, “you want to put space between buildings so when they shake they don’t bump into each other. The problem with that is in New York, space is real estate.” But it turns out, he says, that how close the buildings are set is less an issue than how closely the floors are aligned. And in New York buildings, the floors tend to line up: more good news.
The municipal government has extensive plans, the ground is firm, the skyscrapers are pliable. Might this be one of those rare cases when people should be less vigilant than the day’s terrifying headlines would suggest? Should we all just relax a little?
Not if the Office of Emergency Management has anything to say about it.
“We’ve done a lot with these plans,” Mr. McKinney said, “but it’s not like we don’t lay awake at night.” He added, “If everyone sits back and says the city’s going to ride to their rescue, that’s not going to work. They have to have some capability to help themselves.”
That is where outfits like QuakeKare come in. Based in Southern California, the company sells earthquake preparedness kits in a variety of sizes and configurations. Since the disaster in Japan, said Lane Turville, QuakeKare’s sales manager, “I’ve had thousands of calls; I’ve got thousands more to answer.”
One of the top sellers is the four-person deluxe survival kit, which includes first-aid supplies, a hand-crank radio, a plastic tarp, an LED siren, water purification tablets, a 4-in-1 tool to help turn off the gas, some five-hour candles and duct tape. And, of course, food.
“The food comes in a bar, scored in six places,” Mr. Turville advised. “You break off two pieces per day for three days. The whole thing is to keep you alive. You’re going to be hungry, you’re going to be thirsty, but you’ll be alive.”
Doesn’t sound very deluxe, after all, but then again, it’s only $95 (10 bucks extra for a toilet seat). Mine arrived last week; once I figure out where to store the five-gallon container, it will, I hope, sit unopened for the entirety of its five-year shelf life. I can’t say I feel any more secure knowing it’s there. Manhattan schist seems like a much more solid foundation on which to build your earthquake preparedness.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/nyregion/20critic.html?src=me&ref=nyregion
