Quake Prep

When I wrote my book I expected a San Andreas earthquake scenario to be easy to find with all the Hollywood disaster movies. However, official scenario documentation, particularly more current, has been challenging to find. This particular ShakeOut Earthquake Scenario page on the USGS website is dated January 17, 2018, but much of the information is based on a 2008 ShakeOut Scenario. Since most material I read referenced that 2008 ShakeOut, that is what this scenario post is based on. The ShakeOut  The State of California Department of Conservation has a 2008 earthquake scenario that was used for its ShakeOut drill in the event of an earthquake on the San Andreas Fault ( 2008 ShakeOut Scenario ). The scenario projected about 1,800-2,000 deaths, 50-53,000 injuries requiring emergency care, and $191-200 billion in damages. Like other scenarios, this doesn’t include the lasting disruption those damages will cause. And, those numbers are just estimates from the main shock. Additional ...

 There are 119 public school buildings at increased risk of "significant earthquake damage" because they are classified as unreinforced masonry construction (URM) in seismic safety screenings. What's URM? Here's how earthquakes.utah.gov defines URM "A URM building has brick walls with few or no steel reinforcing bars. During an earthquake, URM buildings are more likely than modern structures to collapse, both inward and outward, and crumble on top of people, cars, sidewalks or structures in and around them. URM buildings are typically older structures. In the 1970s, building codes in Utah were updated to outlaw the construction of new URM buildings."  There are 72,126 children who spend at least some of their schooling in those buildings. That's about 12% of the K-12 children in the state. And those 119 don't include other buildings that were classified as "likely URM" or "likely under-reinforced masonry" buildings. The challenge ...

An earthquake scenario for the San Francisco area is one of the scenarios where finding more recent information is difficult. For an actual scenario, the best I could find was from a simulation in 2006. There was also some information from a 2008 ShakeOut Scenario. There are more recent earthquake hazard and risk calculations available, but I have yet to find these risks and hazards incorporated into a full scenario, where costs and losses are calculated for the earthquake. While the details may be a little different, the whole purpose of this, and other scenarios, is to help you start to grasp the magnitude of damage and loss that a large earthquake can cause. And will very likely cause. Remember that California has generally had better earthquake building codes for a longer time than most of the rest of the United States. An earthquake of a much lesser magnitude can have just as much (if not more) damage and losses in an area where the buildings and infrastructure are not as prepared...