Earthquake in Haiti

[guy]

Hearing the reports about the death and destruction from the horrible earthquake in Haiti, I can only imagine the great destruction earthquakes (not to mention other natural disasters such as volcanoes, floods, etc.) would have done in the Ancient world. It reminds us that without proper building standards and an efficient organized disaster response, the death toll can be unfathomable. Certainly, the Ancient world was at least as vulnerable as Haiti to an earthquake's potential destructive forces and its tragic aftermath

 

Our thoughts are with the people of Haiti.

 

guy also known as gaius

[caesar novus]

Wouldn't most ancient folks be relatively safe from earthquakes, without brittle, builtup, and centralized infrastructure? We may stereotype them according to stone structures we find today, but those were simply what survived vs the plethora of simpler flexible biodegradeable structures. (I hate it when folks say a finding was the first so-and-so, when obviously it was miraculous luck that preserved it and gave "survival bias" to something actually invented over and over earlier.)

 

I have only endured earthquakes on the top of an alarmingly brittle highrise, but hope to encounter any others in a grassy field where I may find it more like a fun jiggle. The worst part comes many hours after the quake, when temporary altruism starts reversing into brutishness. Pity the storeclerks who man their station and put aside their own family needs to provide supplies to patient customers lined up. Ruthless idiots start barging in and getting violent. I'm not talking about any third world place, but the most civilized... especially around nightfall after a quake, it is best to get off the suddenly mean streets.

[Kosmo]

Major roman cities like Antioch and Alexandria had suffered a lot from earthquakes. The losses were high in many cases.

[caesar novus]

Major roman cities like Antioch and Alexandria had suffered a lot from earthquakes. The losses were high in many cases.

Still I would guess their (civilized yet vulnerable) living situation was more a statistical aberration across ancient space and time, and old fashioned situations were typically more forgiving with quakes. P.S. I hear modern Turkish Antioch is ripping most of their underground ancient ruins apart in particularly reckless development.

 

IIRC vastly most quakes and vulcanism are around the Pacific rim (California, Alaska, Japan, Indonesia, etc), where ancient peoples typically lived in forgiving structures. The underlying mechanisms have recently been proven by their volcanos emitting vast amounts of a kind of carbon or element that comes from sealife. The spreading basaltic seafloor is dense and heavy so dives under the buoyant granite continents. Oddly the wet bio slurry of seafloor is a catalyst in turning hot underground rock into propulsive magma, and much of the Pacific rim ends up with lookalike volcanos and fault lines from this.

 

So vulnerability to pacific rim quakes is more a modern curse of making high rises, as well as needlessly bleeding money from upgrade measures by greenhouse loonyness. They worry about tiny amounts of avoidable carbon, while volcanoes (and farm animals for that matter) dump out infinitely more. They look in alarm about sinking volcanic Pacific islands, although that is a known earth crust process thru the ages where basalt must sink vs continental granite must float (submerged dead Hawaiian islands stretch for thousands of miles, millions of years old, not victims of weathering).

[caesar novus]

It sounded like the Hatian leader peeked into my post pointing out how modern centralization increases vulnerability to earthquakes, and he announced the Hatian capitol should become less dominant. I think it is wise when a country splinters off it's political capitol from it's economic capitol, like Washington DC from New York City, Brasilia from Sao Paulo. Think of the comprehensive catastrophe if a Rome, London, or Paris were hit.

 

I wonder why so many earthquakes are in the news that are beyond the "Pacific ring of fire", which wikipedia quotes as "About 90% of the world's earthquakes and 80% of the world's largest earthquakes occur along the Ring of Fire. The next most seismic region (5

[caesar novus]

I wonder why so many earthquakes are in the news that are beyond the "Pacific ring of fire", which wikipedia quotes as "About 90% of the world's earthquakes and 80% of the world's largest earthquakes occur along the Ring of Fire.

Too bad... Chile just blew a big earthquake and much of the Pacific Rim is under a tidal wave warning: http://www.prh.noaa.gov/ptwc/?region=1 with your local estimated wave arrival times detailed at bottom of

http://www.prh.noaa.gov/ptwc/messages/paci...2.27.124623.txt

Edited February 27, 2010 by caesar novus

[guy]

I think it is wise when a country splinters off it's political capitol from it's economic capitol, like Washington DC from New York City, Brasilia from Sao Paulo. Think of the comprehensive catastrophe if a Rome, London, or Paris were hit.

 

Your point may be correct, but I don't think Rome is a good example. In fact, I think many Italians believe that Italy would be a lot better if Rome were to suddenly "disappear." Many feel that Milan is the financial engine of Italy and the politicians of Rome are the parasites.

 

Also, because of Italy's unique and long history (but relatively recent unification), there is less of a nationalistic feeling in Italy than in most other Western countries.

 

 

 

guy also known as gaius

[caesar novus]

I remembered Milan being a separate financial center after I posted. I guess I overlooked it because by chance it's been nearly deserted every time I pass thru (holidays?). Roman parasites must be what makes the hotels so expensive and a bad value - worse than Paris or even Venice, I think. I saw a TV show about gov't related visitors on astronomical freeloading accomodation budgets.

 

You were too kind to bring up an "I told you so" on how the Chile earthquake had only a tiny fraction of fatalities compared to Haiti even from a quake 900 times more powerful (due to bldg codes, modern practices, etc). On the other hand, Chile is used to frequent strong quakes and I bet Haiti might have evolved low tech robust dwellings under a similar regime.

 

Quake richter scales miss the point a bit because they measure the max power at underground epicenter. The power you experience is not only diminished by horizontal distance, but vertical (Chile's was twice as deep as Haiti). And a rarely mentioned point is frequently shaken areas like Chile and California have such shattered bedrock that they may not transmit shocks so efficently (except when loose material lets buildings resonate badly).