Damages and Losses From Future New Madrid Earthquakes

Damages and Losses From Future New Madrid Earthquakes

Now you will know exactly what will happen in your area when the next major earthquake strikes from the new Madrid fault. Forewarned is forearmed.

Published by the Federal and Missouri Emergency Management Agencies.
21 maps/figs./charts; 68 pages

The New Madrid fault produced the largest earthquakes in American history in 1811-12 at a time when populations were sparse and infrastructure was minimal. A repeat of these and lessor earthquakes from that fault zone poses the seismic greatest threat in America outside of California and Alaska. Before this publication, there were several technical reports describing the potential losses and destruction future events would have, but they were so complex and difficult to understand, virtually no one was able to use them except a few earthquake engineers. This book has taken these complex reports and condensed them into a simple algorithm that can be applied by anyone who has passed gradeschool arithmetic such that one can determine, for every county in the midwest in some 20 states, exactly what will happen for any given size of an earthquake on the New Madrid Fault as well as the probabilities for such to happen. Given a specific magnitude, say a Richter 6.5 or 7.5 event, one can calculate by simple arithmetic, county by county, the number of injuries, number of fatalities, number of displaced persons, number of buildings severely damaged, number of buildings collapsed, number of bridges out of commission, number of pipeline breakages, extent of utility outages, and a host of other parameters. This book is where all emergency planners for the Midwest need to begin. National Guard units, Red Cross chapters, Salvation Army units, insurance companies, school officials, police departments, fire departments, hospitals, health departments, businesses, county and state emergency managements officials–all use this book as their basis for emergency planning for earthquakes in the Central U.S.