Earthquakes - Potential Impact on the Central USA

Though it's commonly known that people who live on the west coast need to be concerned about the devastating effects of earthquakes, many who live in the central states may be surprised to learn that earthquake preparedness is needed not just in California, but in their own neighborhoods. The New Madrid Seismic Zone (NMSZ), centered in southeastern Missouri, holds the potential to cause catastrophic earthquakes that could have disastrous effects in at least eight states: Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, and Tennessee.

The NMSZ has experienced four of the largest earthquakes ever recorded in the history of North America.  The quakes (in 1811 and 1812) were powerful enough to have actually changed the course of the Mississippi River.  Smaller quakes, some large enough to be felt and to do damage, continue to occur on a regular basis today.  This seismic zone remains active and unstable.

As this historical map illustrates, due to the nature of the New Madrid fault and other contiguous fault lines, a moderate to severe earthquake in this part of the country would have a much wider impact than that caused by some of the most severe California earthquakes on record.  A recent study (September, 2008) conducted by the Mid-America Earthquake Center at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana concluded that “the total economic impact of a series of NMSZ earthquakes is likely to constitute by far the highest economic loss due to a natural disaster in the USA.”

This study predicts that a severe earthquake could result in economic losses totaling over $400 Billion with hundreds of thousands of buildings damaged or destroyed, hundreds of thousands of people displaced, and tens of thousands injured or killed.  Though it is difficult to predict the timing and magnitude of future earthquakes, earthquakes of the magnitude that would cause such predicted damage are certainly possible anytime within the next few decades.

To me, the clear the message is that, even in the Mid-West and Mid-South, businesses, families, schools and other institutions should have emergency preparedness plans, kits and supplies that take into account the possibility of significant damage from earthquakes as well as other natural or manmade disasters.

I live in the suburbs of Chicago. When I founded LifeSecure in 2005, people from the mid-west that I met were often skeptical about the need for emergency preparedness.  They fully understood the need for people on the West Coast to prepare for earthquakes, for people on the Gulf Coast to prepare for hurricanes, and for people on the East Coast to prepare for terrorist attacks, but they couldn't see much of a need for preparation for those in the "protected middle."  The sheer vastness of the destruction from Hurricane Katrina began to change those views.  Increasingly we have seen people from throughout the U.S. interior states begin to take preparedness seriously.

For those people from the Mid-West and Mid-South who might still need a bit more convincing of the importance of emergency preparedness, this study might be some helpful reading.  Click here for the full study.

Oh, and since those of us in the Mid-West and Mid-South have little training on how to respond in case of an earthquake, this fun and quirky visual "QuakeQuiz" on responding to earthquakes may be useful.  I found it on the San Francisco emergency preparedness website (www.72hours.org), and I learned a few new tips from it.  Take the QuakeQuiz.

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