(intense music)
‐ [Narrator] Earthquakes.
(people screaming)
So devastating.
So unpredictable.
‐ [Man] Seismologists
are as surprised as anybody
when they actually happen.
‐ [Narrator] That even
the pros stay on guard.
(explosions booming)
From survival.
‐ [Narrator] To impact.
‐ [Man] Some events are so big
that they literally break the system.
‐ [Narrator] The effects
can be apocalyptic.
(intense music)
Earth, air, fire, and water,
essential for human survival,
but in their extreme, destructive
to everything, and everyone in their path.
‐ [Man] Coming down,
right now, major tornado.
‐ [Man] Yeah, that's a monster.
‐ [Narrator] These are stories.
‐ [Man] Oh big tower of wet.
‐ Wow. ‐ Whoa, whoa!
‐ [Narrator] Of Apocalypse Earth.
Earthquakes, powerful, spontaneous,
deadly, and profound.
When the planet shifts position,
everything on it must accommodate,
or face destruction.
And when it comes to
earthquake activity on the planet,
there's no place as
extensive as the Ring of Fire.
The Ring of Fire is an arc
of tectonic plate boundaries
that line the fringes of the Pacific Ocean.
It extends 25,000 miles, from South America
along Central and North
America's West Coast,
north to Alaska, and then
down through Russia, Japan,
and Southeast Asia, all
the way to New Zealand.
90% of all earthquakes
occur along this line,
as well as 81% of the world's largest.
Up north of the American coast
of the Ring of Fire sits Alaska,
the most earthquake
prone in the United States.
It's also one of the
most seismically active
regions in the world.
But when it comes to earthquake activity
within the United States,
it's California that
comes to mind most often.
In part, because of the
history of earthquakes
that have rocked the City
of Angels over the years.
(rock music)
Los Angeles is the
biggest city in California,
and the second largest in America.
Its beautiful weather,
beaches, and strong economy
have attracted 13 million people
to make the metro area their home.
But seismologists believe
the city is in jeopardy.
Not from the infamous San Andreas Fault,
but the more recently
identified Puente Hills Fault.
Earthquakes occur in California,
because beneath the surface
of this beautiful state are faults.
These consist of tectonic plates,
continually pushing against
each other, creating stress.
Eventually, that stress has to be relieved,
and when that happens,
the release of energy
and movement is an earthquake.
(earth rumbling)
(trolley clangs)
‐ [Narrator] A century ago,
the very first California city
to experience a major
quake was San Francisco.
In 1906, the San Andreas
Fault, unknown at the time,
literally split the earth open.
That earthquake rocked
the Bay Area on April 18th,
and measured a magnitude
7.9 on the Richter scale.
‐ The most costly disaster
in the history of the United States.
Loss of lives anywhere
from 3,000 up to 18,000,
so it was quite significant
in terms of the losses.
‐ [Narrator] Over 80%
of the city was destroyed,
as a result of devastating
fires caused by the shaker.
The fires lasted for several days,
leaving more than half of
the population homeless.
The Bay Area earthquake is considered
one of the deadliest in US history.
(eerie music)
Southern California has experienced
several major earthquakes
of its own, as well.
‐ If you live in earthquake country,
you have to just learn to
accept that these things happen,
and that there are
unpredictabilities in your life.
‐ [Narrator] The Golden
State's temblors come in all sizes,
and happen all the time.
Hard to imagine, but California
has some 37,000 earthquakes every year.
About 100 per day.
Most of them are under magnitude four,
too minor to feel.
Seismologists use a numerical scale,
known as the Richter scale
to quantify the power of earthquakes.
Charles Richter and Beno Gutenberg
determined the magnitude of an earthquake
could be calculated based upon
the amplitude of seismic waves
recorded by seismographs.
Each whole number increase in magnitude
represents a 10 fold increase
in measured amplitude.
In other words, a 5.0 magnitude earthquake
is about 10 times the amplitude of a 4.0.
And while seismic impact of
earthquakes can be measured,
when they will occur still cannot.
‐ We do not know how to predict earthquakes
in the short term.
We can't tell you when an
earthquake is going to happen.
We try and forecast them in the long term,
but seismologists are
as surprised as anybody
when they actually happen.
‐ Earthquakes scare us
because they're the ultimate
out of control experience.
We're always more afraid
of what we don't control.
(intense music)
‐ [Narrator] If the Puente
Hills thrust fault ruptures,
it could cause a major earthquake
that would have devastating consequences,
especially for the millions of people
who live and work in the Los
Angeles metropolitan area.
‐ If we had this seven plus earthquake,
downtown Los Angeles would actually move
by maybe five, six, maybe even 10 feet.
(intense music)
‐ [Narrator] A sobering
prospect, but not far‐fetched.
Earthquakes in Southern
California have been occurring
for hundreds of millions of years.
For the most part, that's how
the various mountain ranges were formed.
The biggest known earthquake
in Southern California
occurred in 1857.
By studying how it
deformed the local geology,
scientists determined it was a 7.9 quake.
But because the area was so
sparsely populated at the time,
only two deaths were recorded.
‐ That earthquake was probably
larger than the 1906 earthquake,
and if it happened today,
it would be a disaster.
‐ LA's never seen an earthquake like that,
but we have had a whole succession
of smaller earthquakes,
but they've all taught us
important lessons in one way or another.
For example, one of the
most important earthquakes
in the history of the world
was the 1933 Long Beach earthquake.
‐ [Narrator] In 1933, the
population of Los Angeles
was around 1.2 million.
On March 10th, at 5:55 p.
M., a 6.4 magnitude earthquake
occurred on the Newport
Inglewood fault zone.
The quake itself lasted five seconds,
with about 10 seconds of ground shaking,
and it resulted in 120 deaths.
Many of these fatalities occurred as people
ran out of buildings, and
were hit by falling debris.
This footage from a W. C. Fields movie,
which was being filmed that day,
is the only real time
recording made of the event.
The quake caused 50 million
dollars in property damage,
much of it to structures
made of unreinforced masonry.
Many of them were school buildings.
(somber music)
‐ Now fortunately,
school was not in session,
so children weren't k*lled by the hundreds,
but parents were so freaked out by this
that they lobbied the state legislature
to enact the world's first building codes.
‐ [Narrator] The earthquake
eliminated all doubts
regarding the need for
quake‐resistant design
for structures in California.
‐ There had been a law in Long Beach
requiring buildings to be
made out of brick for fire safety.
So they were particularly hard hit
when this earthquake
happened, and we now recognize
that mortar just dissolves
in an earthquake.
‐ After the Long Beach earthquake,
California enacted legislation,
the so‐called Field Act,
that improved the building codes,
and set strict guidelines
for public structures
such as school buildings.
‐ [Narrator] Another
bill was later introduced
to require that earthquake precautions
be taken for all California buildings.
This was known as the Riley Act,
which became law on May 27th, 1933.
‐ Following the 1933 Long Beach earthquake,
there was a long period
of seismic quiet in LA.
Almost 40 years of nothing, no earthquakes.
Interestingly, that coincides
with when LA really exploded in population.
‐ [Narrator] But in 1971,
Southern California residents
were reminded that they
live in earthquake country.
The area was hit by a massive quake,
bigger than the last one.
On February ninth, a
6.7 magnitude earthquake
occurred on the San Fernando Fault Zone.
Known as the Sylmar Quake,
it was caused by a reverse fault,
a type of thrust fault that has
an extremely high angle
of vertical movement.
‐ Here in Southern California,
we also have a network of reverse faults
that create our mountains.
It shows us that these
mountain front faults,
the ones that are creating
our high mountains,
pose a very significant
risk to the Los Angeles area.
(rubble clattering)
‐ [Narrator] The Sylmar
earthquake k*lled 65 people,
and caused more than half a billion dollars
in property damage.
It was a wake up call
about a particular kind of construction.
(dramatic music)
‐ Much of Los Angeles was
built in the 1950s and '60s,
and in 1971, we saw that a
very common style of buildings
called non‐ductile reinforced
concrete performed very badly.
Understatement of the year.
The Olive View Hospital,
where the first floor disappeared,
was one of these non‐ductile
reinforced concrete buildings.
‐ [Narrator] Non‐ductile is
a technical term for brittle.
The last type of structure
you'd want to be located
in during an earthquake.
In fact, the Olive View Hospital collapse
k*lled three patients,
and a hospital worker.
(sirens wailing)
At the time of the Sylmar earthquake,
it was widely believed
that the Field and Riley Acts
were sufficient protection
against earthquakes.
But while the building
of new brick structures
had been outlawed, there were still many
pre‐existing brick buildings
that were vulnerable.
‐ The city of Los Angeles
took the controversial step
of requiring the strengthening
of existing old brick buildings.
‐ [Narrator] As for the non‐ductile
reinforced concrete buildings,
that was a different story.
Because there were so many of these
throughout the Los Angeles metro area,
no law was passed requiring
current owners to retrofit.
Only that new buildings of
this type could not be built.
‐ So it showed us that in fact
we had a ways to go in terms of
improving our building codes,
and that we needed to be very
careful about our use of land.
‐ [Narrator] After the earthquake,
the California Legislature
enacted the Alquist‐Priolo Bill,
which required the
mapping of active fault zones.
Whenever faults are found,
they are integrated into
seismic hazard maps.
Builders and homeowners are, by law,
compelled to review these maps
in order to be aware of potential risks.
Despite the fact that the Los Angeles area
had suffered through two major quakes,
it continued to experience
massive population growth.
By 1987, there were 3.3
million people in the city,
and millions more in the surrounding areas.
On October 1st, 1987, the LA area
experienced the Whittier
Narrows earthquake.
A 5.9 magnitude event that
occurred on a blind thrust fault
some 16 miles east of downtown Los Angeles.
Three days later, a magnitude
5.3 aftershock occurred,
causing additional damage.
Three people died as a
direct result of the temblors.
Five other deaths were attributed
indirectly to these events.
The Whittier Narrows earthquake in 1987,
and then the Northridge quake in '94,
once again prompted efforts
to enhance safety and
emergency preparation.
These two quakes also
brought blind thrust faults
to the attention of
seismologists and policy makers.
They determined that a rupture
of the Puente Hills blind thrust fault
could result in an energy
release some 15 times greater
than that of the Northridge earthquake,
the worst in Los Angeles history so far.
‐ [Man] The Puente
Hills earthquake would be
one of the worst events we
can imagine here in Los Angeles.
(somber music)
‐ [Narrator] When it
comes to earthquake activity,
seismologists do not consider
the Northridge quake of '94 as the big one.
Nonetheless, it's the worst
Los Angeles has suffered thus far.
On January 17th, 1994, at 4:30 a. m.,
residents were awakened to a
terrible and powerful rumbling.
The quake, centered near Northridge,
northwest of downtown Los Angeles,
had a moderate magnitude of 6.7.
But the ground velocity,
the speed at which a point on the ground
moved during the shaking,
was the highest ever
instrumentally recorded
in an urban area in North America.
The actual quake lasted
about seven seconds,
with ground shaking about twice that long.
In that relatively short period of time,
the temblor devastated
entire neighborhoods.
But its path of destruction
seemed to hopscotch across the city.
‐ We understand these
variations to be associated
with the complexities
of the earthquake itself,
as well as the earth beneath our feet.
I mean, some places have
very weak soils, and shake a lot.
Others are on hard rock,
and the shaking is not so bad.
The Northridge earthquake indicated
how variable those processes can be.
‐ [Narrator] Closer to the
epicenter, the powerful shaking
caused an apartment complex to collapse.
(somber music)
16 residents were k*lled.
Office buildings also collapsed.
But due to the early hour,
hardly anyone was at work.
‐ Everybody was in their wooden houses,
and our wooden houses
are amazing structures
to resist earthquakes.
‐ [Narrator] Had the quake
occurred four hours later,
when people were up and about,
perhaps thousands would have been k*lled
throughout the city.
(eerie music)
Aftershocks triggered the
collapse of many structures,
already weakened by the initial shock.
The quake challenged some
longstanding assumptions.
It damaged at least 120
steel frame high‐rises,
which were supposed to withstand a quake.
The steel was expected to
absorb the vibrations, and bend.
Instead, there were fractures.
‐ The connections between the columns
and the beams came loose,
and those connections are quite critical
to maintain the lateral
resistance of the building.
‐ [Narrator] Some of these structures
were 20 miles from the epicenter,
the initial point of the quake's rupture.
But distance from the epicenter
has been a confusing
issue for the general public.
In actuality, it is the
distance from the fault plane,
the entire length of the
moving tectonic plates
that often determines damage.
‐ There are usually
other parts of the fault
that give off more
energy than the epicenter,
'cause it builds up
steam, and is rupturing out
so that the maximum
energy release in Northridge
was coming out under Chatsworth,
and up under the Granada Hills area.
‐ [Narrator] And yet, there
was major damage to the south.
Part of the Santa Monica freeway collapsed.
‐ That freeway overpass
looked a little isolated
from the rest of the damage.
As it turns out, it's in an
area we call La Cienega,
which means in Spanish, the swamp,
and it turns out that
soft, swampy materials
tend to experience larger ground shaking.
‐ [Narrator] Subsequent to
the quake, 680,000 residents
were without power, gas,
water, or telephone service,
and lacked these utilities for days.
The Northridge earthquake proved to be
the most costly quake
in United States history.
40 billion dollars in damages,
with 63 related deaths, and 12,000 injured.
Previous to this quake,
seismologists had focused primarily
on areas vulnerable to
the San Andreas fault.
But the Northridge earthquake
persuaded scientists to widen their scope.
‐ It occurred in a place
where we didn't expect such an event.
In particular, it was on
a buried fault structure
that has vertical motion.
We call these types of
structures blind thrust faults.
‐ [Narrator] That's a fault which is buried
below the surface, hence the name blind,
and consists of two tectonic plates.
In a rupture, one will
grind up and over the other.
‐ These are faults that, you know,
they're not as big as the
San Andreas, but they're right,
literally in the case of
the Puente Hills thrust,
directly beneath the city.
‐ [Narrator] The Puente
Hills blind thrust fault,
aimed at a 45 degree angle
from below downtown Los Angeles,
is a sleeping geological monster.
‐ Of any potential earthquakes
in the United States,
Puente Hills is really
the most threatening.
‐ [Narrator] Seismologists
believe that this monster
could wake up, and unleash a deadly force,
the likes of which Los Angeles
has never before experienced.
(intense music)
‐ [Narrator] For decades,
Southern Californians
have lived with the fact
that earthquakes will come.
They will strike without warning,
and cause death and destruction.
So geologists and seismologists,
in anticipation of the next big one,
are in a race against time
to determine where the faults are,
and what they're capable of doing.
Following the 1987
Whittier Narrows earthquake,
and the 1994 Northridge quake,
seismologists became increasingly aware
of a threat from not just
the San Andreas fault.
This animation, created by
the Southern California Earthquake Center,
provides a comprehensive
look at the problem.
The San Andreas is depicted
by the colored diagonal ribbon
in the center of the screen.
Each one of the other colored ribbons
represents the new threat, a vast network
of blind thrust faults below
the LA metro area, and beyond.
Using a technique
called seismic reflection,
Harvard University professor
and seismologist John Shaw,
and University of California at San Diego
professor Peter Shearer,
were able to discover the existence
of the previously unknown
Puente Hills blind thrust fault.
It runs 25 to 30 miles from
Northern Orange County,
through downtown Los Angeles,
and all the way to Beverly Hills.
Seismologists now believe
the 1987 Whittier Narrows quake
was actually a partial rupture
of the Puente Hills fault.
Subsequent study revealed
it has ruptured many times,
over thousands of years.
‐ We're standing above the eastern end
of the Puente Hills blind thrust fault.
You can't see anything
where we're walking right here,
but the reason the road behind me rises up
is because this hill behind
me has been uplifted
in hundreds of earthquakes
on the Puente Hills blind thrust fault.
‐ [Narrator] It's unlike
a strike slip fault,
like the San Andreas, which
consists of two tectonic plates
on a horizontal orientation.
A thrust fault consists of two planes,
and when it ruptures, one
rises up above the other,
causing the earth to rise above it,
and stay that way permanently.
(eerie music)
A rupture of a larger portion
of the Puente Hills fault
could cause widespread disaster
the likes of which we haven't
seen in a modern era quake.
‐ If you tried to design
the worst possible fault
in the worst possible
location for Los Angeles,
you'd come up with the
Puente Hills blind thrust.
‐ [Narrator] To understand it further,
the Southern California Earthquake Center
commissioned seismologist Robert Graves
to create a computer model
of probability scenarios.
By feeding it with data about
the fault's characteristics,
and the geological conditions
throughout the LA area, it shows
how a Puente Hills thrust
fault rupture would spread.
‐ What we're looking at in the animation
is we see the ground begins to shake
as the earthquake starts,
and there are some small ripples,
and they begin to propagate out
from the area around the epicenter.
What is very striking is
that as the waves propagate
away from the earthquake,
they are actually interacting
with the geological layers
in the sedimentary
structure of the LA basin.
The waves become trapped,
and they start bouncing around,
and they actually build up
very large ground motions,
very large waves.
‐ [Narrator] According to
the results of the simulations,
a Puente Hills thrust fault earthquake
could result in 250 billion dollars
worth of property damage.
Seismologists have even
turned to NASA for help.
Incredibly, the geology of earthquakes
can be studied from outer space.
GPS satellites send signals,
which help scientists to
continually map the earth.
By comparing the data over time,
minute changes in
certain areas are revealed.
Using this method,
scientists have concluded
that the land surface of Los
Angeles is being squeezed
at a rate of .2 inches per year.
So, at that rate, when
will Puente Hills erupt?
‐ Good news is that our research suggests
that this thing only
generates large earthquakes
every few thousand years,
so they're extremely rare events.
The flip side of that, the bad news,
is that when they occur,
they appear to be very large.
Something well in excess
of magnitude seven,
possibly as large as magnitude 7.5.
(intense music)
‐ [Narrator] Studies of a rupture
of the Puente Hills fault are grim.
The losses predicted are for a disaster
10 to 15 times greater than
the 1994 Northridge earthquake.
Clearly, it would put
LA to the ultimate test.
The state spent billions after
the 1994 Northridge quake
to retrofit more than
2,100 freeway overpasses.
(ominous music)
But, are the citizens of LA prepared?
‐ We can't imagine that
the boys in white hats
are gonna come riding in to save us
after a large event.
We saw in Katrina, that in fact,
some events are so big that
they literally break the system.
(intense music)
‐ [Narrator] In a worst case scenario,
Southern Californians
who survive the initial impact
of a major quake will have to cope
with a difficult aftermath.
They'll be better equipped if they've
heeded the advice of experts
to take the initiative to prepare.
The big one will happen.
It's not a matter of if, but when.
(helicopter whirring)
Northern California had its own reminder
of earthquake volatility back in 1989.
The devastation was massive, but baseball,
literally, helped save the day.
(intense music)
It's a perfect day for
baseball in Northern California.
As inter city rivals, the
San Francisco Giants,
and the Oakland As gear up
for game three of the 1989 World Series.
The whole city is watching,
but fans have no idea
that Mother Earth is about
to take a game ending swing.
(dramatic music)
60 miles away, the San
Andreas fault suddenly snaps.
(earth rumbling)
The deadly fault runs
almost the length of California,
and directly underneath San Francisco.
(intense music)
At a magnitude 6.9, this is
the most powerful earthquake
in nearly a century.
It quickly spreads terror and
destruction across the city.
(flames crackling)
(sirens wailing) ‐ Are you okay?
(dramatic music)
‐ [Narrator] On the two level Bay Bridge,
a 50 foot section of the upper deck
collapses without warning.
The enormity of the disaster
leaves Oakland Fire Lieutenant Mark Hoffman
and his crew stunned.
The violent shaking destroys
a mile and a quarter section
of the double decker Nimitz freeway,
causing the upper level to
crash onto the lower level,
and hundreds of vehicles below.
‐ [Narrator] Rescuers desperately
try to locate trapped motorists.
‐ There was a zone about four feet deep
over most of the length
of the collapsed area.
Every 75 or 100 feet or so,
there was a deep beam that came down,
and of course crushed anything under it,
but that also provided this confined space
in which people could survive.
‐ [Narrator] Underneath all that rubble,
Tim Petersen fights for his life.
The injured man is battling broken ribs,
a punctured lung, and internal bleeding.
‐ It's hard to even breath.
The lung is leaking air,
so I figured there was no surviving it.
It was gonna k*ll me.
‐ [Narrator] After six agonizing hours,
there's a glimmer of hope.
‐ I can hear all these sounds above,
so I was yelling to them,
and somebody did crawl
down and finally yelled to me
and said, "Hey, I'm gonna go get somebody.
"I can't believe there's
anybody alive down in here."
‐ [Narrator] The firefighter finds a path
through the debris.
‐ It's a small tunnel you had to crawl into
to get to where I was.
I mean, you can't describe
somebody crawling down in there.
This thing is still falling,
and I mean talk about risking your life,
talk about a hero.
‐ Get out of the way!
‐ Remarkably, there were only 42 fatalities
in the Cypress structure.
Considering how many
cars could've been there,
this is a remarkably low number.
(somber music)
‐ [Man] Diane, give me
a three point search here.
‐ [Narrator] Despite
the horrific human toll,
the catastrophe could've been much worse.
Had it not been for the World Series.
‐ The game started at five p. m.,
so most people got off
work early, got home,
and then the earthquake occurred at 5:04.
So just when the Interstate 880 freeway
should've been jammed with cars,
it was virtually empty.
(earth rumbling) (intense music)
‐ [Narrator] New York is not the first city
that comes to mind as being at risk
for dangerous earthquakes.
But just a few miles below
the New York City area
lay several earthquake faults.
125 years ago, the New York
area was hit by an earthquake.
‐ The largest earthquake that we know of
historically in New York
City is the 1884 earthquake,
roughly magnitude five.
‐ [Narrator] August 10th,
1884, an earthquake rumbled up
from underneath the Atlantic Ocean.
The epicenter of the quake
was 17 miles south of city hall,
off the coast of Rockaway Beach.
10 o'clock in the morning,
unprepared citizens
across the city were
shocked to find themselves
grabbing for walls,
calming startled carriage horses,
and ducking from falling
bricks, as the whole city shook.
Thousands of chimneys in the city
were broken in the magnitude five quake.
Parapets came down, windows were shattered.
Luckily, there were very few
injuries, and no fatalities.
The East Coast from New
York south to Maryland,
and north to Vermont was
rocked by seismic waves.
An area covering roughly
70,000 square miles.
In fact, in terms of seismic hazard,
New York City is the fourth most
at risk city in the country,
following San Francisco, Los Angeles,
and Seattle.
People sometimes confuse
seismic hazard with seismic risk,
but they are not the same.
‐ Because risk is really not only defined
by the natural hazard.
There are two more
ingredients that go into risk.
Hazard is one.
The other is the value of the assets
that are exposed to that hazard,
and there is plenty of valuable assets
concentrated in the New
York City metropolitan area.
‐ [Narrator] The third
ingredient is the vulnerability,
or what is sometimes
called fragility of those assets
with respect to the hazard.
Meaning seismic shaking
and other seismic hazards.
‐ In this area, roughly
every 100, 250 years
a magnitude five occurs.
Magnitude six is in the
order of 1,000 years.
Magnitude seven are
almost beyond imagination,
but they can, unfortunately, occur.
‐ [Narrator] On the Richter scale
that measures an earthquake's impact,
each whole number increase in magnitude
represents a tenfold increase
in measured amplitude.
In other words, a 5.0 magnitude earthquake
is about 10 times the amplitude of a 4.0.
Since 1737, at least six earthquakes
of magnitude 5.1 or higher
have struck New York State.
The 1737 quake was also
centered near New York City,
but New York is not alone.
One of the earliest recorded events
took place over 250 years
ago in Massachusetts.
An earthquake estimated
to be magnitude 6.0 to 6.3.
‐ For the northeastern
part of the United States,
the earthquake that really defines
what we think the earthquake hazard is
is the 1755 Cape Ann earthquake.
We think it was centered
just east of Cape Ann, Massachusetts.
(tense music)
That earthquake did major damage in Boston,
in Portsmouth, New
Hampshire, Portland, Maine.
It was felt up to Halifax, Nova Scotia,
felt down as far south as
Winyah, South Carolina.
‐ [Narrator] Other East
Coast and Midwestern cities
have been devastated by k*ller quakes.
‐ There are clusters of
earthquakes in the Carolinas,
South Carolina, North Carolina,
around Charleston in particular.
‐ [Narrator] On August 31st, 1886,
just two years after the 1884
earthquake in New York City,
a massive earthquake ripped through
the coastal city of
Charleston, South Carolina.
(earth rumbling)
Estimates based on damage
patterns and historical records
put the Charleston quake
at magnitude 6.5 to 7.3.
More than 2,000 buildings
were damaged in Charleston.
Between 60 and 100 people lost their lives.
The Charleston quake was
felt as far north as Manhattan,
as far west as Omaha, Nebraska,
and as far south as Cuba.
(intense music)
But there are more recent reminders
of devastating earthquakes
along the East Coast.
‐ I was 18 years old at
the time, and like I say,
it was an event that I will never forget.
‐ [Narrator] Just after
midnight on a July night in 1944,
a magnitude 5.9 earthquake erupted
in the sleepy town of Massena, New York.
‐ It was the first major earthquake
that this area had experienced.
‐ We had gone out to
celebrate our graduation.
There was a few of us
that went out to the local bar,
and had a few beers.
And about 12 o'clock,
we closed the place down.
Then we decided we'd better get home.
It was a very, very quiet night.
You could hear a pin drop.
I stepped in the door,
put my foot on the first step, and bang.
That the earthquake hit.
(intense music)
‐ I woke up feeling as if
there was a freight train going very fast
past the door of my room,
and the bed was shaking.
‐ I could hear dishes rattling.
‐ Just like somebody had
picked ya up, and shoved ya.
‐ I think every other person on the street
was out in the middle of the street
in their pajamas and robes.
‐ [Narrator] The earthquake
ripped through Massena,
and across the border into
neighboring Cornwall, Ontario.
(glass shattering)
‐ The fault runs from the
northwest to the southeast,
across the river, and through the towns
of Cornwall and Massena.
(sirens wailing)
The next day, I think the full force
of what had happened hit.
People were wandering
around the town like zombies.
‐ [Narrator] The two small
towns of Massena, New York,
and Cornwall, Ontario suffered
more than two million
dollars in property damage.
About 50 million in today's dollars.
90% of the brick chimneys were destroyed,
and brick masonry and concrete structures
suffered severe damage.
Plumbing and house foundations were ruined.
(intense music)
The Massena earthquake
has been closely studied
by East Coast seismologists and others
as an example of the kind of damage
a smaller earthquake can do in an area
of mainly brick and masonry buildings.
‐ The Massena earthquake was interesting
because it showed what an earthquake
that is not quite six can do
to the type of construction
that we still have a lot of
around in New York City.
(horn blares)
‐ One of those kinds of earthquakes
centered right near one of
our major metropolitan areas,
like Boston or New York,
would cause significant damage.
‐ [Narrator] In fact, an
earthquake on August 23, 2011
in Central Virginia, only
underscored that awareness.
The 5.8 shaker was felt by an estimated
1/3 of the US population.
As far north as Maine,
as far west as Chicago,
and as far south as the tip of Florida.
That trembler caused
two to 300 million dollars
in property damage, including
the Washington Monument,
and National Cathedral in Washington DC.
Earthquakes continue to
rumble under the city to this day.
Could the next New York quake
do more than just rattle the city's nerves?
(tense techno music)
‐ [Narrator] In recent years,
earthquakes have continued
to shake buildings right underneath
Manhattan streets and sidewalks.
(siren blaring)
Just one month after the World
Trade Center attack in 2001,
a magnitude 2.6 earthquake centered right
at 55th Street and 8th Avenue
rumbled up from the Earth.
City officials were initially concerned
there had been another t*rror1st attack.
‐ Mayor Giuliani was very concerned
that an expl*si*n had gone off
somewhere in the sewer
system in New York City.
Well, they couldn't find, of course,
where that expl*si*n was going on,
because the earthquake occurred
five miles beneath the city,
near Central Park, actually.
‐ We had an earthquake back in January,
very similar kind of thing.
Made noise, shook a little in
certain places, not in others.
People probably reacted more to this one
because of the events of September 11
and then this thing since then.
(tense music)
‐ [Narrator] These mini
quakes are nature's way
of reminding us that if the big one
comes rumbling up through the Earth
and rips apart one of the
largest cities in the world,
the death and destruction
could be enormous.
(suspenseful music)
The earthquake history of New York
and the rest of the East Coast
could have been very different.
The metropolitan area
has a geological history
that is as diverse as the city itself.
(upbeat music)
Scientists have learned a great deal more
about this ancient geology
from a relatively new field
of study, plate tectonics.
‐ We learned in the second
half of the 20th century
that the way the Earth works is basically
by way of the theory of plate tectonics.
‐ [Narrator] Plate tectonics
is the geological theory
that there is a layer of plates
or rock covering the
globe that is in a slow,
but constant drift across
the surface of the Earth.
In other words, the surface
of the earth is not fixed,
but is in constant motion,
like slow moving bumper cars
that periodically collide with one another.
These plates generally extend out
and under the sea around
the world's land masses.
The North American plate extends roughly
from the western edge of the United States,
all the way east to the middle
of the North Atlantic ocean floor.
‐ So, most earthquakes
occur at plate boundaries
where the plates rub against each other.
‐ An earthquake is a sudden slip
of the two sides across a fault.
So, the rock makes a movement suddenly
and releases stress.
‐ [Narrator] This rubbing
at the western edge
of the North American plate
where it meets the Pacific plate
has resulted in a long history
of devastating earthquakes.
(upbeat music)
But there are key differences
between earthquakes
that happen at the edge of a tectonic plate
and those that happen
in the middle of a plate.
‐ Within the center of the plate,
it's more of the squeezing
kinds of earthquakes
that build mountains,
as we have, for instance,
in the Northeastern United States.
‐ Most famous in the United States
is the New Madrid area
in the central United States
along the Mississippi River Valley.
They are in the New York
and in the Boston areas
and all the way up to the Canadian border
in the northeastern United States.
(swooshing techno music)
‐ [Narrator] About 220 million years ago,
a fused continent known as Pangea,
comprised of several of
our modern continents,
began to break apart.
In the wake of this upheaval,
the modern North Atlantic Ocean appeared.
‐ And now, New York sits
right on the edge of this continent.
‐ [Narrator] Near the
end of the last Ice Age,
the New York area and
the rest of the East Coast
experienced another significant set
of geological developments.
‐ Some 10,000 years ago, the glaciers
started to slowly retreat.
But what they did before they left,
they polished everything clear,
and they carved out the
weakest spots in the rock.
(pensive music)
‐ [Narrator] The glaciers
carved deep valleys
along the underlying fault lines.
‐ These black lines here
are the most active faults
now in the modern geological time.
The most prominent of them
is the 125th Street fault that runs here.
‐ [Narrator] The 125th
Street fault is clearly visible
from its valley‐like geology.
‐ The glaciers hollowed
out the shape of Manhattan
to follow those fault lines, and that's why
we have, actually, these
shapes of Manhattan.
‐ [Narrator] If there is a
slip along one of these faults,
devastating seismic waves could be released
up to the Earth's surface.
(ominous music)
(rumbling)
The first seismic wave initially stretches
and squeezes the rock.
The other seismic wave is the shear wave
that bends the rock sideways.
It is this second wave that
gives us the horizontal shaking
that causes so much damage to buildings.
(tense music)
(alarms, sirens blaring)
(clattering)
Seismic waves on the East Coast
travel farther than they
do on the West Coast.
‐ At the edge of the plate,
there is so much
earthquake activity going on
that it'd shatter the plate.
So it's a little bit like your windshield
that has a lot of cracks in it
because someone threw a stone in it,
and there's still light coming through,
but you can't see through very clearly.
The same thing with the seismic waves
where those plates are
broken by prior earthquakes,
the seismic waves go sort of through,
but it's not very clear.
(ominous music)
Here in the eastern United States,
we can feel earthquakes
as small as magnitude one.
Certainly, magnitude two are wildly felt
all over New York City, for instance,
Californians have no clue
that there was a magnitude two earthquake.
So, if a three and a half or four
occurs here on the East Coast,
everybody is up in arms.
Californians say, "Okay,
we had a four today
this morning," and
keep drinking their coffee.
(‐ [Narraechno music)
‐ [Narrator] If a major
earthquake should hit New York,
vulnerable building
types and varied geology
could be a dangerous
mix waiting to combust.
One of the most dangerous
components of this deadly brew
is a geological phenomenon
known as soil liquefaction.
Soil liquefaction is when partially
or fully saturated soil, such as landfill,
loses firmness due to the
shaking of an earthquake.
When this happens, the ground
becomes liquified, much like quicksand.
This can then result
in structural instability.
(energetic chase music)
The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake
that struck San Francisco,
magnitude 7.1, was a
tragic example of liquefaction.
(ominous music)
Before 1906, there was no
Marina District in San Francisco.
After the 1906 quake, a
swampy area downtown
was filled in with debris
from the earthquake
and covered over with dirt.
Houses were built, and the area
became a popular neighborhood.
83 years later, when the
next major earthquake hit,
the loose soil caused
tremendous damage in the district.
(sirens blaring)
‐ The problem is, when you fill these areas
with sand and dirt, they will shake
more strongly than the nearby rock areas.
Kind of like shaking a bowl of Jello.
‐ [Narrator] Liquefaction
could severely harm
similar landfill areas in New York City.
As history has shown, even
a magnitude 5 earthquake
could severely damage
thousands of buildings.
(tense music)
And risk analysis experts estimate
that if a magnitude 7 were to strike
in the same location as the 1884 quake,
it could k*ll more than 6,000 people.
13,000 more could be injured.
(tense music)
‐ We estimate that in
a worst‐case scenario,
something like a 7 magnitude earthquake,
over 30 million people will
be impacted by the event.
‐ [Narrator] A major
metropolis like New York
requires an incredibly complex
underground infrastructure.
(tense music)
‐ Power lines, and water lines, gas lines
are always susceptible to ground shaking
from a major earthquake.
‐ [Narrator] There are
also sanitation canals
that carry away wastewater,
and steam pipes delivering
heat to large buildings.
‐ There is a whole spider network of stuff
going on underground.
‐ [Narrator] Ironically, you
may be safer underground
during an earthquake, than you would be
standing in the middle of 42nd Street.
‐ Generally speaking, you
are better off underground
because the amplitude of shaking diminishes
as you go deeper into the Earth.
It's safer to be underground
than above ground,
or in a building that
sticks way out and shakes.
‐ [Narrator] A vivid
example of this occurred
during the deadly Mexico
City earthquake in 1985.
Soil liquefaction destroyed
hundreds of buildings.
But below ground, the subway
system was almost unscathed.
Within hours, subways were
up and running around the city.
But there are vulnerable spots
underground in New York, particularly where
different infrastructure systems intersect.
Water mains may break.
‐ There are sewer
pipes that are very brittle.
Many of them are cast iron.
That's a very bad material
to respond to an earthquake.
‐ [Narrator] Moving back above ground,
one sees the biggest danger
posed by an earthquake: buildings.
(tense music)
In 1995, New York City finally adopted
a seismic building code.
This was a major step in making
all new construction safer
from earthquake damage.
‐ The biggest difference
that we would have now
in our seismic building codes
for the eastern part of the United States
is the requirement for stronger connection,
so that if a building gets pushed sideways
in earthquake shaking,
the connections don't break.
So, if you have a vertical beam
and you have a horizontal beam,
the horizontal beam will now be attached
more strongly to the vertical beam,
so that if it shakes,
you don't break the bolts
or break the welds and
have the beam come down.
‐ [Narrator] Bridges and
pre‐code buildings, however,
will remain a major problem
if an earthquake hits the East coast.
(siren blaring)
‐ [Narrator] A major
challenge for older cities
on the East Coast in terms of earthquakes
is bringing building codes up to date.
‐ The building codes for
cities like New York or Boston
generally apply only to new buildings.
By not reinforcing old buildings,
we always take the chance
that the earthquake will occur
before that building gets
replaced with a new building.
And that's a major in our eastern cities.
‐ [Narrator] But there are
other potentially deadly problems
that could befall some
of Manhattan's newest
and most densely populated neighborhoods.
Areas like Battery Park City.
Before the World Trade Center was built,
this area at the
southwestern tip of Manhattan
was mostly Hudson River water.
But thousands of tons of dirt dug up
for the foundations of the towers
created acres of new ground.
Ground that developers wanted to build on.
And just as San Franciscans created
a new neighborhood in the Marina District,
New Yorkers created their own neighborhood
built on landfill.
‐ They took the piers, filled in sand,
and then built wonderful
high‐rise buildings.
They are well‐engineered,
but they were not engineered
with earthquakes in mind.
‐ For areas where you can't
get down to the rock itself,
the typical construction practice
is to put down many, many pilings,
and just let the friction of the pilings
trying to push into the
soil hold the building up.
‐ [Narrator] These
buildings could be vulnerable
to liquefaction in a major New York quake.
‐ That's exactly the kind of material
we have in Battery Park City
and other places in New York City.
So, now we have a situation
where we have very beautiful buildings,
very expensive buildings,
both residential and business buildings,
in an area that will
have amplified shaking.
(tense music)
‐ [Narrator] But it's not just buildings
that could collapse.
There are other hazards, such as bridges,
and elevated train stations.
Klaus Jacob takes us down to street level
to demonstrate that engineers
from a much earlier period
of New York City building history
were trying to prepare
for earthquake hazards.
‐ So, here we are, right smack
where the 125th Street fault
crosses Broadway and Manhattan.
‐ [Narrator] Normally, the
subway runs underground,
but when the engineers
tried to build the subway
through the rock in the fault zone,
they realized it would
be a difficult challenge.
‐ So, they stayed level and built
the bridge across the valley.
So, this bridge is there,
because the fault is there.
The bridge is a document for the fault.
(mellow music)
And what you see here is actually a hinge,
which rotates like this.
Why did they do that?
Well, there's the fault over there,
and they thought the
fault would move vertically,
so the bridge could adjust.
What they didn't know is that the fault
doesn't move this way here.
Nowadays, it moves this way.
What they should have
done is do it this way,
the axis, and then move around like this
to accommodate the
horizontal fault movement.
For 1905, that's really
very advanced engineering.
Of course, they got it wrong,
but I think they did a very
good job in at least trying
to accommodate
earthquakes and fault motion.
‐ [Narrator] But good
intentions won't be enough
if a major earthquake shakes
New York to its foundation.
For a major urban center such as New York,
recovery from this kind of mega disaster
could take many months.
(mellow music)
‐ We estimate that the
amount of property damage
in a major earthquake would be
in the order of $250
billion of property damage.
But, of course, you have to add to that
the damage to business interruption,
so that the total economic
disruption in dollar terms
is likely to be at least
half a trillion dollars.
If it's a moderate earthquake
in the 6 or 7 magnitude range,
then even after six
months, we'll be a long way
from having all the reconstruction
and the rebuilding complete.
(upbeat music)
‐ One of the things I am
feeling ever better about
as a seismologist working
in the northeastern part of the country
is that the awareness of
earthquakes is growing.
We think about preparedness.
We have more seismic
provisions in our building codes.
There are more and more schools
that are doing earthquake
drills, as well as fire drills.
So, we're gradually becoming
more aware and more planned
for how we would deal with an earthquake,
if it were to occur.
The problem is, of course,
most people in the
northeastern United States,
most people in New York,
most people in Philadelphia,
most people in Boston don't think
that they will ever face
a damaging earthquake.
And that is just a fallacy
that we could be proven wrong on someday.
(ominous music)
‐ [Narrator] For the
island nation of Haiti,
a catastrophic earthquake in 2010
proved just how tragic
the lack of strong building codes can be.
(dramatic music)
Port‐au‐Prince, the capital of Haiti,
a country mired in grinding poverty.
(ominous music)
A 7.0 earthquake rips
across the island nation.
(clamoring)
Panicked Haitians realize
this is unlike anything
they've ever felt before.
(energetic chase music)
(crashing)
‐ It was relatively shallow.
So, this earthquake started at a depth
of about maybe eight miles or so.
‐ An earthquake that's
shallow, that's near the surface,
that means more of that
energy is dumped on the surface.
‐ The earthquake in
Haiti was a perfect storm
of very intense ground
shaking and very weak buildings.
(rumbling)
None of the buildings
in Haiti were designed
to resist earthquake forces.
They don't have any
effective building codes.
‐ [Narrator] Across the region,
the massive quake
delivers a punishing blow.
(speaking in foreign language)
American filmmaker Dan
Woolley has just checked
into a hotel when disaster strikes.
(crashing)
‐ I heard the expl*sive sounds
of the building starting to crack,
and I started to feel the
ground move underneath me.
And within three seconds,
everything went dark.
(tense thumping music)
‐ [Narrator] The hotel
pancakes into a pile of rubble,
knocking Dan unconscious.
‐ When I come to my senses,
I find myself in complete darkness.
I would put my hand in front of my face
and I couldn't even see that.
‐ His location in the hotel,
I think, is what saved his life.
He was between a
stairwell and the elevators,
both of which tend to be core structures
with concrete block walls,
which will have more strength
than other more open areas in the building.
‐ [Narrator] Dan uses
the flash from his camera
to see the tight space
he's been trapped in,
and something else that terrifies him.
‐ I pulled up my pant leg,
and as I shone the light
of my camera on my leg,
I saw the worst injury
I'd ever seen in my life.
It was just split open
from just below my knee
to just above my ankle.
‐ [Narrator] Dan snaps another picture
and spots a safer place to be.
‐ I saw an elevator car
with its door open, on the lobby floor.
And I just thought, you
know, by what kind of miracle
is this open and available for me?
And I decided to take the risk
and crawl the 20 feet to the elevator.
And right after I reached the elevator,
the building started to shake again.
(suspenseful music)
We were hit with the first aftershock,
which was a 6.0 aftershock.
And I knew that that
move had saved my life.
‐ [Narrator] Dan hopes
someone will come to his aid
before he bleeds to death.
Meanwhile, aftershocks continue to rumble.
(energetic chase music)
Finally, after being buried in debris
for 65 agonizing hours,
Dan hears the words he's been praying for.
‐ I heard a voice coming down
from the shaft of the elevator.
"I'm here to get you out of there."
And all of a sudden, I had hope and I knew,
"Okay, this is not gonna end here.
This is not gonna end today."
‐ [Rescuer] Come on.
‐ [Rescuer] All right, we're gonna get you
something to drink first.
(somber music)
‐ [Narrator] The final
death toll is astronomical.
And as a result of
inadequate building codes,
over one million people were left homeless.
(energetic chase music)
(mellow music)
‐ [Narrator] The heartland
of America has seen
its share of natural disasters:
k*ller tornadoes and floods
that have destroyed buildings
and swept away entire towns.
But despite its landlocked
position in the country,
earthquake danger also
lurks beneath its fertile fields.
‐ [Narrator] Memphis,
Tennessee sits 50 miles south
of one of the most dangerous
earthquake faults in America.
‐ [Narrator] The New Madrid fault line.
‐ A major quake in the New Madrid zone
would create unimaginable
havoc in Memphis, Tennessee,
which is the closest city
to the New Madrid fault
and built largely of brick.
‐ I think the first
reaction to an earthquake,
even if you're a seismologist today
is this fundamental sense of terror.
It just, out of a clear blue sky,
it's like somebody's picking up your house
and shaking it back‐and‐forth.
‐ [Narrator] The prospect of
an earthquake in the heartland
may seem unimaginable, but
it's actually happened before.
‐ [Narrator] One of
America's worst earthquakes
occurred 200 years ago
in the heart of the country.
‐ The mother of all
earthquakes in the United States
was in 1811 and 1812 in an obscure place
in southern Missouri,
where Missouri, Kentucky,
Arkansas, and Illinois all
meet, called New Madrid.
‐ [Narrator] December, 1811,
The weather was warmer than usual
in New Madrid, Missouri.
‐ There were about five or
600 people living in New Madrid.
It was a thriving river city.
It was located on the largest S curve
in that section of the river.
‐ A little after two in the
morning on December 16th,
the Earth sort of came unglued
with the first of the earthquakes.
(rumbling) (clattering)
‐ There was an great roar
that's compared in the accounts
to thunder or heavy a*tillery.
And the ground started shaking,
and people were thrown from their beds.
Furniture was overturned.
(clattering)
And in the middle of the night in 1811,
you would have no idea what this was.
‐ [Narrator] Intense seismic waves radiated
in all directions for hundreds of miles.
(pensive music) (lightning crackles)
‐ The thing about New Madrid is that
it's in the middle of
a vast alluvial plain.
And the seismic shocks
from it spread unrestricted
across certainly eastern America.
‐ [Narrator] The quake was felt as far away
as New York, Boston, Montreal,
and Charleston, South Carolina,
where it rang the bells of
Saint Phillips Episcopal church.
(bells pealing)
‐ People went running into the street
in their night clothes,
and birds of all kinds
were screeching and flying about,
cattle were stampeding.
‐ [Narrator] With the Earth convulsing,
it was impossible to stand.
‐ They threw themselves on the ground
and started praying in fear.
And one couple grabbed all their children,
ran into the street.
The mother suddenly realizes
that they've left the infant behind.
And she says to her
husband, "Go get the baby."
He starts back to the house
and the ground is shaking so badly,
he's thrown to the ground a dozen times
before he can finally get to the house,
crawl inside, reach the
baby, and get back out.
(suspenseful music)
‐ [Narrator] George Crist, living 100 miles
north of New Madrid, wrote this account.
‐ [George] There was a great quaking
of the Earth this morning.
Tables and chairs turned
over, knocked around.
All of us knocked out of bed.
The roar I thought would leave us dead.
(shattering)
All you could hear was
screams from people and animals.
(screaming)
I don't know how we lived through it.
‐ [Narrator] There were
no seismographs in 1811
to record the shock.
But based on eyewitness accounts
and destruction reports,
seismologists believe the quake
measured 8.0 on the Richter Scale,
10 times stronger than the 1906
earthquake in San Francisco.
(suspenseful music)
And the horror wasn't over.
Frightened residents next
confronted inexplicable
large clouds of strange
gas seeping from the Earth.
‐ There was a sulfurous smell,
which came up out of
the bowels of the Earth.
‐ [Narrator] Escaping into the darkness,
many people reported
seeing bizarre flashing lights.
‐ The lights are not unique.
There are other earthquakes where people
have said that they've seen them.
The explanation is that
it has something to do
with the squeezing of the rocks.
They emit electrical signals.
They call that piezoelectric effect.
‐ [Narrator] After a night
of terror, the sun came up,
but dawn brought no
relief from the tremors.
‐ There were rumblings and
shakes all through the night.
And then at 7:00 a. m.,
there was another shock,
at least as hard as the
first and maybe worse.
And it kept going all through the day.
(rumbling)
‐ [Narrator] Many homes and barns
that endured the 2:00 a. m. shaker
now clattered to the ground
from this massive aftershock.
(clattering)
With daylight, people could
see the earthquake destruction.
(ominous music)
(loud cracking)
‐ There were also these
large fissures created.
Sometimes they were
four and five feet across
and 10 miles long.
There are several accounts of buildings
being swallowed up into the fissures.
‐ [Narrator] Not only
was the land in turmoil.
The Mississippi River
and lakes in the region
were thrown from their banks.
‐ There were huge
disruptions along the river valley.
The water of the Mississippi River
was sloshed around like a bath tub.
Banks caved in and took trees with them.
‐ Probably the most
dramatic thing that happened
was a huge piece of land was thrust up,
and this piece of land crossed the river.
And so all this water comes down river,
and hits this impediment.
Well, it's like when you're in a bath tub
and you push the water away from you,
there's only one place it
can come, back towards you.
And so, a 30‐foot high wall of water
goes rushing back upstream.
‐ [Narrator] Incredibly,
the mighty Mississippi
flowed backwards.
(waves burbling)
Churning against uplifted land,
it retreated from its normal course,
charging back upstream toward Illinois.
(tense music)
At 11:00 a. m., there was yet
another massive aftershock,
estimated to be close
to 8 on the Richter scale,
(clattering)
the third huge seismic
event in less than 12 hours.
(ominous music)
Two hunters near the town of Little Prairie
witnessed something shocking.
‐ They describe the waters of the lake
draining away in this earthquake.
This area was described as a prairie.
That part of the ground got
lifted up in the aftershock,
such that the shallow
lake just disappeared.
And they were there watching this go on.
‐ [Narrator] During
these large aftershocks,
the Earth belched up immense
quantities of sand and debris
from unusual gaping fissures in the ground.
Geologists call these
strange geysers sand blows.
(bursting)
‐ So, we're talking about a lot of sand
being blown up through
the face of the Earth,
sometimes a hundred feet high.
And of course, it's bringing
up whatever is down there.
‐ [Narrator] These sand volcanoes
are the result of soil liquefaction.
As the shaking saturated Earth compacts,
pressure builds up, until a
vent or fissure is forced open.
This brings the watery sand
mixture blasting to the surface.
(noisy gushing)
‐ These things can be 15, 20‐feet deep.
You can still see evidence
of these sand blows
throughout the Boot Hill region of Missouri
and down into the northeastern Arkansas.
‐ [Narrator] Massive
flooding along the river
forced people to flee to higher ground.
‐ The town of Little Prairie,
which was actually hit harder
than New Madrid in the
first day of earthquakes,
was flooded and the town evacuated.
‐ These people were scared to death.
They had just witnessed a calamitous event,
and they were moving across a landscape
that they knew very well, but it had been
so dramatically affected by the fissures
it would have been like a w*r zone.
‐ [Narrator] Amazingly, the
largest shock was yet to come.
Their hell had only begun.
(ominous music)
‐ [Narrator] The cities
of Memphis and St. Louis
lie in the heartland of America,
a place of bedrock values
and fertile farmlands.
(mellow music)
There is little concern for
an obscure earthquake fault
that cuts through the region.
A fault that has wreaked havoc in the past,
unsettling life, and
transforming the landscape.
(tense music)
Early on the morning
of December 16th, 1811,
an 8.0 earthquake
erupting near the community
of New Madrid, Missouri shook the ground
for hundreds of miles in all directions.
(shattering)
Aftershocks continued to rumble
through the area over the next month.
Residents abandoned their splintered cabins
and set up makeshift shelters,
with temperatures
hovering just below freezing.
Still, the shaking continued.
‐ The Earth stayed in
motion for quite a long time,
as much as a month.
‐ [Narrator] After people calmed down,
they began to rebuild,
only to be terrorized again.
‐ Then on January 23rd, 1812,
there was another monstrous earthquake.
And it created very much
the same type of hysteria
that resulted from the December 16th quake.
‐ [Narrator] These were shocking events,
but only precursors of what was to come.
(thuds)
Frightened residents believed
they were suffering the wrath of God.
‐ If all of a sudden, the hand of God
comes down and strikes
right where you're at,
there's just a natural
tendency to take that
as a sign that maybe you
need to clean up your act.
And certainly, that happened in New Madrid.
The ground was in a
constant state of unrest
with the aftershocks,
they just have the sense
that it was moving almost constantly.
(somber music)
‐ [Narrator] Then on February 7th, 1812,
the New Madrid fault unleashed
its most violent earthquake to date,
8 plus on the Richter scale.
(rumbling)
‐ February 7th is what the
locals called the hard shock,
which is kind of amazing, by all accounts,
the biggest earthquake of the sequence.
The fault crossed the Mississippi River
in three different places.
(ominous music)
‐ [Narrator] The region,
which had been under
so much stress and strain,
could handle no more.
(waves crashing)
This third earthquake generated a new round
of bizarre events, more sand blows,
foul vapors, and collapsing riverbanks.
(waves crashing)
Incredibly, 3,000 square miles of land
east of the Mississippi River subsided,
in some places, by 10 feet.
(somber music)
Enormous amounts of
water from the Mississippi
poured into the depressed area,
and formed a massive
lake in just a few hours.
(somber music)
These floodwaters covered
a dense hardwood forest
and k*lled all of the trees
except the Bald Cypress,
which thrive in water.
This body of water, called Reelfoot Lake,
still exists today.
Pictures taken just 70 years
ago during a seasonal drought
show hundreds of stumps
just below the surface.
The Bald Cypress left in these waters
tell the story of this instant lake.
‐ Well, Bald Cypress has a
big root system called knees.
And they have a bulb that
grows at the water level.
One of the interesting
aspects of the subsidence
and why know that it was
three feet of subsidence,
is that after the earthquake,
so with the next 10 to 20 years,
these trees grew a second bulbous area,
three feet above the previous one.
‐ [Narrator] Severe aftershocks continued
for several months.
By the time it was over,
the region had endured
more than 2,000 quakes and aftershocks,
the most intense series of quakes
ever experienced in North America.
No one knows how many died
because the area was sparsely settled.
‐ From the eyewitness accounts,
I've been able to pinpoint about 100 deaths
in the New Madrid earthquake series.
I think it's quite possible
that there could have been
a number more than that,
say, maybe as many as 500,
because there had to have been many people
on the river who were
just never accounted for
because so many boats
were lost on the river.
‐ [Narrator] It would take some time
before things returned
to normal in the region.
(thunder crackling)
‐ For at least a year afterwards,
many of the residents of New Madrid
lived in a tent city.
Other people left the area,
but soon they started drifting back,
as people are wont to do.
‐ [Narrator] After a
century of relative quiet,
memories of these quakes faded,
and cities were built up again,
with little knowledge of the
hazard in the Earth below.
Some, like Memphis, are dangerously close
to the faults that erupted in 1812.
(tense music)
‐ If we had a series of
New Madrid quakes today,
comparable to what happened 200 years ago,
the effect on infrastructure,
like highways and bridges,
could be cataclysmic.
(tense music)
‐ [Narrator] The heartland of America
is sitting on a geological time b*mb.
(clattering)
St. Louis, Missouri and Memphis, Tennessee
are located near the
most active seismic zone
east of the Rocky Mountains.
This puts both cities in the cross hairs
of a devastating shaker.
Just 150 miles south of the city,
and 15 miles beneath the Earth's surface,
lies the New Madrid fault,
ready to deliver an eight‐point earthquake
that will topple buildings,
buckle highways, destroy bridges,
and create a mega
disaster across the region.
The historical record tells the tale.
(electronic music)
‐ [Narrator] Nearly 200
years ago, people in this region
had first‐hand experience
with not just one,
but a series of monster quakes.
The United States Geological Survey
has plotted worldwide earthquakes
from the last 50 years.
A great majority of them
fall into a predictable pattern.
‐ Most earthquakes in the world
occur along plate boundaries
where two tectonic plates
are moving past one another.
And as they try to move, the rocks resist
until they break and you have earthquakes.
(upbeat techno music)
‐ [Narrator] But there is
an active earthquake area
located in southeastern Missouri,
on the banks of the Mississippi,
the New Madrid seismic zone.
(ominous music)
4,000 earthquakes registered
here over the last 20 years.
And no one knows exactly why.
‐ The theory of plate tectonics
provides an excellent explanation
as to why we have earthquakes
over most of the world,
but it doesn't explain
why we have earthquakes
right in the middle of a plate.
It violates what the theory would suggest.
(ominous music)
‐ [Narrator] Though not
part of a plate boundary.
There is some evidence that there may be
an ancient fault line under New Madrid,
now buried beneath 3,000
feet of Mississippi sediment.
‐ This entire part of the United
States is under compression
from essentially the Mid‐Atlantic Ridge,
and the pressure of that pushing
all the way through this area.
We know for a fact
that underneath this area
lies an ancient rift, a major fault system
that is 600 million years old.
These faults have been activated
various times through history
and have recently turned on.
(tense music)
‐ The problem today is that
what was hitherto an
unpopulated part of America
is now very populated.
There are two cities that are most at risk.
One is Memphis to the south,
and one is St. Louis to the north.
‐ [Narrator] And between these cities today
lies a complex network of roads,
bridges, and communication links.
The geologic clock is
ticking for New Madrid.
Crisscrossing faults could
erupt in a massive quake
that would make the 1811 and 12 shakers
seem like a dress rehearsal.
Yet, questions still loom over the Midwest:
when will another earthquake erupt,
and will the residents be ready?
(tense techno music)
With three‐dimensional
geologic mapping technology,
Roy van Arsdale has modeled
this subterranean world,
hoping to find some answers.
‐ Well, we're compiling
all kinds of information
that we can get in terms
of deep information.
‐ [Narrator] Using sound
waves, scientists determine
the composition of the rocks and subsoil,
a geological snapshot of the terrain
under the Mississippi sediments.
This second layer is five
miles below the surface.
‐ We're looking at what's
called the Precambrian surface
in these multi‐colored depiction.
And what you can also see is that
the Precambrian
geology is broken by faults.
That's what these planes
are that displaced that surface.
And there are earthquakes occurring
along these two particular faults.
These faults are oriented in such a way
that it looks like they are
trending towards Memphis
and Shelby County, the star in the model,
so we expect that they probably do pass
beneath where we are right now.
‐ [Narrator] Next, they
plot onto the geography
the locations of earthquakes
in the region since 1995.
‐ There've been earthquakes occurring
over a long period of time,
but these are the earthquakes
that are well located.
With the earthquakes in
this pseudo 3‐D projection,
they look like a shotgun blast
until you rotate the model,
that you see that the earthquakes
align themselves along the plane.
What you're looking at
now is the Reelfoot fault
and the earthquakes are
popping off along that fault plane.
‐ [Narrator] There it is.
(upbeat techno music)
Pretty small, just 149 miles long
compared to the San Andreas fault
that stretches more than 700 miles.
(upbeat techno music)
But it packs a devastating punch
because seismic waves travel
easily through Midwest bedrock.
(upbeat techno music)
Seismic intensity maps of the 1811 event
show destructive shaking
in each of these quakes,
stretching for more than 350 miles
from the epicenters on
the New Madrid fault line.
‐ Clearly, the New Madrid
earthquakes were big events,
and they were felt all the
way to the Atlantic seaboard,
and they really rocked
the whole mid‐continent.
That makes them big,
potentially damaging events
and the kind of quakes
that we really worry about.
‐ If conditions stay the same
as they've been for
the past thousand years,
another series of earthquakes comparable to
the 1811 and 1812 series, is inevitable.
‐ [Narrator] That seems to be
the recurring theme among seismologists.
When it comes to these massive tremors,
it's not a matter of if, but when.
‐ We have to realize that the magnitude
of the biggest disasters
that we can imagine
are really catastrophic in proportion.
And there's no way, really,
for governments to prepare.
‐ [Narrator] And then, how
to cope in the aftermath.
‐ There would be aftershocks
that would take place afterward,
that can be just as nerve‐wracking
as the main shock.
‐ [Lucy] It's the secondary
failures, the compounding,
that takes us from disaster to catastrophe.
‐ The consequences could be devastating.
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01x03 - Deadly Earthquakes
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Earth, air, water and fire are essential elements in life. But what happens when these natural elements turn on humanity?
Earth, air, water and fire are essential elements in life. But what happens when these natural elements turn on humanity?