Let’s back up first. In the fall of 1985 Gail and I were living in Queens, New York, with our then several-month-old daughter. If I recall the details correctly, we were awakened by a very loud rumbling sound and some moderate rapid shaking that Sunday at 6:30 am. I said to Gail that either a train just went through the basement of our 1893 Victorian home, or the boiler blew up, or we just had an earthquake. I quickly confirmed that neither a train had gone through the basement, nor had the boiler exploded. That left only the possibility of an earthquake. We knew the sounds of the occasional very heavily overloaded construction and excavation trailers bouncing along on New York City’s famously pot-holed and washboard streets. This was not it! It was something more…and it was enough to awaken us quickly.
Later in the morning, the radio news confirmed that we had had a magnitude 5.0 earthquake, located some tens of miles north of us, which originated several miles underground. Our daughter had slept through it without so much as a peep.
Earthquakes are NOT unusual in many parts of the world, or in many parts of the United States, for that matter. Recent reports serve to create the impression that we are undergoing a period of unusual seismic activity. For the most part, this isn’t so. Earthquakes are generally no more numerous at this time than in past years, decades or centuries. The difference is that we now know of the stronger tremors almost immediately. Also, when such an event impacts people (and there are so many more of us in so many more places), we tend to remember them with particular clarity and assign more importance to them as an event, not just for the destruction.
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One caveat to consider is that even earthquakes may go through cycles, much as weather and sunspots do. However these cycles are yet to be understood, as there isn’t sufficient long-term data at this time. Keep in mind that we are capable of detecting more earthquakes than at any time in the past, and we’re much better at pinpointing their exact location. Even as recently as twenty or thirty years ago, we couldn’t do this nearly as well. So we report on earthquakes more often and we provide greater information about their locations and effects than at any time in the past. This helps form our impressions about them.
What evidence is there that things have not become worse? There are many, and they are nearly 100% in agreement with one another.
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Some solid resources were queried for this article.
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From the American Red Cross
Earthquake mythology from the California Department of Conservation
From MSNBC
And an only slightly different opinion from the American Herald Daily (but only affecting a relatively short time span of decades)
The Weather Network (with video)
And from the world famous Lamont-Doherty Cooperative Seismic Network (of Columbia University) in Palisades, NY…their main website, and nearly real-time seismographs. Keep clicking back a day at a time to observe what they recorded in recent weeks. It is eye-opening, to say the least.
You will be very surprised at the activity that goes on all the time.
As a major resource, perhaps the best site for nearly real-time monitoring of what’s going on in the world is the U.S. Geological Survey website. This is a vast resource for everything you want to know about what’s happening with earthquake activity now and in the recent past. You can find them HERE. Prepare to spend a considerable time exploring this deep resource.
Consider that each magnitude of increase on the seismic scale corresponds to a 30x increase in energy released. So a 3.0 earthquake, which you’re not very likely to notice, is 1/30th the energy of a magnitude 4.0 earthquake. If you were to take this up to a level 9.0 earthquake, like the recent temblor off of Japan, that would be an astounding 729 million times more powerful. To put that in perspective with something I have experienced, the Japanese quake was 810,000 times more power than the one that my wife and I noticed in Queens 25 years ago. Amazing!
Did you know that the one of the most destructive quakes in U.S. history did NOT occur in California? It happened on the New Madrid fault…in Missouri. More HERE.
How do you prepare for an earthquake? The USGS has information for all of us, with a lot of data regarding each state. Here is the page for New Jersey, which includes a map of seismic activity in the state from 1990-2006. HERE is the information from FEMA, and from Wikipedia.
Things are not always what you think, and with earthquakes this is particularly true. What you CAN do is contribute to the relief efforts to help those affected. There are many reputable sources that could use your help. Pick one. Do something to help.
Thanks, Rich
