George F. Will: Unstable Earth
Earth, that living, seething, often inhospitable and not altogether intelligently designed thing, has again shrugged, and tens of thousands of Pakistanis are dead. That earthquake struck 10 months after the undersea quake that caused the tsunami that killed 285,000 in Asia. Americans reeling from Katrina, and warned of millions of potential deaths from avian flu, have a vague feeling of pervasive menace from things out of control. Too vague, according to Simon Winchester.
His timely new book, "A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906," reminds us that we should have quite precise worries about the incurably unstable ground on which scores of millions of Americans live. This almost certainly will result in a huge calamity, probably in the lifetime of most people now living....
When friction freezes [the earth's plates] for a while, stupendous kinetic energy builds up until, suddenly, plates unlock and the energy is released, sometimes in ways that seem to involve related spasms around the world.
Consider 1906: On the last day of January that seismically dangerous year, an earthquake in Ecuador and Colombia -- perhaps an 8.8 on the Richter Scale -- killed about 2,000. Just 16 days later there was a large Caribbean quake, followed five days later by one in the Caucuses, and on March 17 by one that killed 1,228 on the island of Formosa. On April 6 a 10-day eruption of the volcano Vesuvius began with rocks blown 40,000 feet into the air over Naples. Two days after Vesuvius subsided, San Francisco was knocked down, and 2,600 acres of it were then devoured by three days of fires. About 3,000 San Franciscans died then, four months before a Chilean quake killed 20,000.
Read entire article at WSJ
His timely new book, "A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906," reminds us that we should have quite precise worries about the incurably unstable ground on which scores of millions of Americans live. This almost certainly will result in a huge calamity, probably in the lifetime of most people now living....
When friction freezes [the earth's plates] for a while, stupendous kinetic energy builds up until, suddenly, plates unlock and the energy is released, sometimes in ways that seem to involve related spasms around the world.
Consider 1906: On the last day of January that seismically dangerous year, an earthquake in Ecuador and Colombia -- perhaps an 8.8 on the Richter Scale -- killed about 2,000. Just 16 days later there was a large Caribbean quake, followed five days later by one in the Caucuses, and on March 17 by one that killed 1,228 on the island of Formosa. On April 6 a 10-day eruption of the volcano Vesuvius began with rocks blown 40,000 feet into the air over Naples. Two days after Vesuvius subsided, San Francisco was knocked down, and 2,600 acres of it were then devoured by three days of fires. About 3,000 San Franciscans died then, four months before a Chilean quake killed 20,000.