Bridges collapse, roadways crack and buildings crumble. \u00a0The ground violently shakes as homes, offices, schools —\u00a0even hospitals and police stations\u00a0 — are reduced to a pile of cinder blocks, bricks and splintered wood. \u00a0Thousands are dead, tens of thousands are injured. \u00a0Daily life comes to a screeching halt as desperate relatives and rescue crews dig through concrete and steel trying to save those who survived, but are buried alive.<\/p>\n
It’s a scene many of us watched unfold in Haiti just two weeks ago and in China in 2008. \u00a0But this feared earthquake is expected to hit closer to home, inside our own borders. \u00a0Scientists are predicting a major shaker, 7.0 or greater on the Richter scale, to strike in the United States within the next 50 years. \u00a0Hardest hit — not Los Angeles or San Francisco as you would expect — but St. Louis, Little Rock and Memphis. \u00a0Heartland cities along or near the Mississippi River.<\/p>\n
The New Madrid Fault<\/strong><\/p>\n Geologists and emergency management officials have been watching the New Madrid Fault, a crack in the earth’s crust that zig-zags along the Mississippi River from Southern Illinois to Northern Mississippi. \u00a0It’s been relatively quiet until recently. \u00a0But a series of minor earthquakes, measuring up to 3.4, have been felt recently in small towns across seven states. \u00a0Just last week, residents of tiny Lynn, Arkansas were jolted out of bed in the middle of the night as a 3.3 quake shook windows, shattered knick-knacks and rattled nerves. \u00a0Monster earthquakes, believed to register hgher than 7.0, hit this area back in 1811 and 1812. \u00a0The force of those twin quakes rattled\u00a0towns up to a thousand miles away. \u00a0Furniture moved in Washington, DC, chimneys collapsed in Maine and church bells rang in Boston.<\/p>\n Poverty and Disaster<\/strong><\/p>\n Particularly concerning here is the number of people that live at or below the poverty line. \u00a0Some communities along the Mississippi River have 26% of their residents living in sub-standard housing and unable to fend for themselves should disaster strike. \u00a0Emergency Management Officials have estimated that a 7.0 earthquake would destroy more than 227,000 buildings, kill almost 3400 people and seriously injure more than 63,000 others in seven states from Indiana to Mississippi. \u00a0Images of poorly built buildings and homes leveled in Haiti along with a population not financially equipped with the basics to survive this kind of tragedy, have raised concerns of a similar tragedy and rescue effort happening here.<\/p>\n Preparing for the Worst<\/strong><\/p>\n The second week of February is Earthquake Awareness Week in the New Madrid Strike Zone. \u00a0Since 2006, authorities have been working on the New Madrid Seizmic Zone Catastrophic Planning Project — a multi-state, multi-agency effort to improve how emergency crews will rebuild and recover after a major earthquake, much of it based on the response following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. \u00a0 State emergency management officials from seven states are hoping that the nearly 41 million residents who live in the New Madrid strike zone are taking the recent outbreak smaller quakes as a warning for the big one they expect to happen sooner than later.<\/p>\n New Madrid Earthquake Resources<\/strong><\/p>\n For more information on the New Madrid Fault and the Center for Earthquake Information and Research<\/a>. \u00a0You can also learn more about Earthquake Preparedness in the New Madrid Strike Zone through the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency<\/a> or the Central US Earthquake Consortium<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bridges collapse, roadways crack and buildings crumble. \u00a0The ground violently shakes as homes, offices, schools —\u00a0even hospitals and police stations\u00a0 — are reduced to a pile of cinder blocks, bricks and splintered wood. \u00a0Thousands are dead, tens of thousands are injured. \u00a0Daily life comes to a screeching halt as desperate relatives and rescue crews dig […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-236899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236899\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}