A journey around the United States in search of the truth about the
threat of earthquakes leads to spine-tingling discoveries, unnerving
experts, and ultimately the kind of preparations that will actually help
guide us through disasters. It's a road trip full of surprises.
Earthquakes. You need to worry about them only if you're in San
Francisco, right? Wrong. We have been making enormous changes to
subterranean America, and Mother Earth, as always, has been making some
of her own. . . . The consequences for our real estate, our civil
engineering, and our communities will be huge because they will include
earthquakes most of us do not expect and cannot imagine--at least not
without reading Quakeland. Kathryn Miles descends into mines in the
Northwest, dissects Mississippi levee engineering studies, uncovers the
horrific risks of an earthquake in the Northeast, and interviews the
seismologists, structual engineers, and emergency managers around the
country who are addressing this ground shaking threat.
As Miles relates, the era of human-induced earthquakes began in 1962 in
Colorado after millions of gallons of chemical-weapon waste was pumped
underground in the Rockies. More than 1,500 quakes over the following
seven years resulted. The Department of Energy plans to dump spent
nuclear rods in the same way. Evidence of fracking's seismological
impact continues to mount. . . . Humans as well as fault lines built our
"quakeland".
What will happen when Memphis, home of FedEx's
1.5-million-packages-a-day hub, goes offline as a result of an
earthquake along the unstable Reelfoot Fault? FEMA has estimated that a
modest 7.0 magnitude quake (twenty of these happen per year around the
world) along the Wasatch Fault under Salt Lake City would put a $33
billion dent in our economy. When the Fukushima reactor melted down,
tens of thousands were displaced. If New York's Indian Point nuclear
power plant blows, ten million people will be displaced. How would that
evacuation even begin?
Kathryn Miles' tour of our land is as fascinating and frightening as it
is irresistibly compelling.
