From: eachus@Dr_No.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus)
Newsgroups: alt.hurricane.andrew
Subject: Re: Preventing hurricanes
Date: 2 Sep 92 15:46:42 GMT
	<Aug31.182055.37255@yuma.ACNS.ColoState.EDU>
	<5390@unixhub.SLAC.Stanford.EDU>
Distribution: na
Organization: The Mitre Corp., Bedford, MA.

In article <5390@unixhub.SLAC.Stanford.EDU> joann@ariadne.SLAC.Stanford.EDU (Jo Ann Malina) writes:

 > If we evacuated all the flood plains, tornado alleys,
 > earthquake-prone areas (and remember, the Midwest is going to get a
 > doozy when New Madrid slips again, as it will, sooner or later),
 > sides of cliffs, etc, just where would we live?

   In lots of nice houses in lots of places which can stand for
centuries.  While there will always be some risk from storms, fires,
and earthquakes no matter where you live, some areas are a lot more
dangerous than others.  If you correctly account for risks when buying
a house, there should be significantly greater than fifty per cent
chance that it will still be standing a hundred years later.  Would
you take that bet on your house?  (There is nothing wrong with living
near a major fault if the house is designed for it, just as there is
nothing wrong with building houses in the Homestead, Florida area,
ASSUMING THAT THE LOCAL BUILDING CODES ARE WELL WRITTEN AND ARE
FOLLOWED.)

   I live in Hollis, New Hampshire.  About a year after we moved in,
the worst flood in fifty years hit the area.  The hardest hit areas
were in Massachusetts towns upstream of Hollis on the Nashua River,
and in Nashua downstream from Hollis.  But there was NO flood damage
to houses in Hollis, not even in the trailer park near the river.  An
ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure.  Not only are
the building codes strict in Hollis, they are unwilling to grant
variances to any safety rules, but they are quite willing to waive
other rules to increase safety.  (My house is closer to the property
lines that the rules allow, but building where it is put it about six
feet higher above the brook that crosses the property.  So when the
town issued a variance to build on our lot, they insisted the house be
above the 100 year flood line.)

   In spite of all you hear on TV about the property damage from
Andrew being the worst this century, there have been much worse
hurricanes which did much more damage.  (But the TV commentators don't
use constant dollars.)  Florida was incredibly lucky that Andrew
didn't hit 20 miles further north, and lost some of its fury in the
Bahamas, and didn't occur closer to high tide.  There are worse
disasters coming, and as Andrew is making clear, the survivors are
going to have to be able to help themselves.  Think of a Mount St.
Helens or a Mt. Pinatubo upwind of a major city, or if the winds in
Andrew had been as high as those in Cammille (over 200 MPH
sustained!), or if the Loma Parieta earthquake had been as strong as
the 1905 San Francisco quake.  Such major disasters will continue to
happen, and people are going to have to be ready ahead of time.

    An exercise which would be fun if it wasn't so gloomy.  What were
the top ten disasters--natural or otherwise--in this country in this
century, and what are your criteria for deciding?  A quick shot:
Hurricanes: 3 Cammille, '36? in Rhode Island, and the one that hit the
	Florida Keys in the fifties.  
Volcanos: 1 Mount St. Helens.
Earthquakes: 3 1905 San Franciso, 1970's Van Nuys, CA?, and Loma Parieta.
Explosions:  1 Texas City Ammonium Nitrate explosion.
Fires: 2 Coconut Grove and Oakland, Calif.  (The Chicago fire was last
	century, wasn't it? I remember it was near the turn of the
	century.)

    Interesting. I didn't list any floods, although there are probably
a lot in the top 100 disasters.  Of course, a lot of the damage from
Cammille was due to flooding.  Also, no coal mining disasters showed
up, but the coal mine fire in Centralia, PA eventually resulted in the
permanent evacuation of the town.  The Oakland fire might not have
been the worst single forrest fire, but it was so fast moving.  Also,
there have been a lot of houses lost to lava flows in Hawaii, another
slow moving disaster like Centralia.  If you count riots as single
disasters, the rioting following Martin Luther King's assasination
should be near the top of the list.  Maybe there should be one
"natural" list and one for man-made disasters.
--

					Robert I. Eachus

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Newsgroups: alt.hurricane.andrew