While earthquakes sometimes kill people directly through mudslides and flooding, most earthquake deaths are actually caused by collapsing infrastructure; hence the oft-repeated statement, “Earthquakes don’t kill people, bad buildings do.” The earthquake body count, and the depth and breadth of hardship and economic disruption, depend on the level of earthquake preparedness. Up-to-date and well-enforced building codes, appropriate infrastructure, and well-equipped disaster response teams minimize the impact of earthquakes.
Yes, that’s huge, but you’re going to see the difference between a country that is prepared for earthquakes (Chile) and one that isn’t (Haiti).
I replied:
The central U.S. isn’t.
I’m wondering what will happen when stresses that have accumulated around the New Madrid fault zone erupt again, either directly on the fault itself or elsewhere in the central US.
The central US terrain transmits seismic forces a considerable distance, so that any major earthquake could cause widespread destruction. There are natural gas pipelines, densely populated areas, and busy transportation corridors, including the Mississippi River itself, close to the fault zone. Much of the infrastructure has not been earthquake-hardened.
The 1811-1812 earthquakes were fearsome, but caused comparatively little damage, owing to the sparse population and almost nonexistent infrastructure in the region at that time.
Say goodbye to Chicago, St. Louis, and Indianapolis. None built for quakes, whatever that really means.
New Madrid fault is the basis for the 2011 national disaster drill. As a planner, let me be the first to say: we’d all be f—-d. A “Katrina level” event, and then some.
The lessons of history
Indeed, Chile has made the effort to prepare itself for seismic activity following the catastrophic magnitude 9.5 Valdivia earthquake in 1960, which is the strongest earthquake yet recorded. The epicenter of the Valdivia quake was not far from that of the 2010 quake, which was just offshore of the Maule Region.
It’s human nature to look for excuses to ignore situations that are difficult to deal with. The Cleveland Plain Dealer article, New Madrid fault no problem, geophysicists Seth Stein and Eric Calais say, reports that these two scientists claim that the New Madrid fault is shutting down, so that it isn’t worth the expense to strengthen the infrastructure in the fault zone. But other scientists warn that Stein and Calais base their conclusion on too little evidence:
“Politicians don’t get re-elected spending lots of money on an event that may not happen in the next 50 years — until Katrina,” said geologist Gary Patterson of the University of Memphis’ Center for Earthquake Research and Information, known as CERI. “That absolutely changed the paradigm.”
The New Madrid situation is further complicated by the lack of scientific agreement on what the new findings mean.
“I’d hate to stick my own neck out and say there’s not going to be [another] earthquake” in the fault zone, said seismologist and CERI director Charles Langston. “That’s really a radical statement, based on a piece of data that has other interpretations.”
…
Other scientists aren’t convinced Stein and Calais are right about the New Madrid. Several note that GPS readings in China showed similarly slight intraplate movements before the devastating Sichuan quake last August, which killed 69,000.
Yes, worry!
A careful reading of that same article reveals that Stein and Calais never actually claimed that there is no earthquake risk, but rather, that the seismic action could occur in the nearby Wabash fault zone instead of on the New Madrid fault itself:
Assuming Stein and Calais are right, where might the New Madrid strain migrate? What fault system would be the next to switch on, and when? The researchers don’t know.
“One would think that the most likely place is to move up north into either southern Illinois or southern Indiana,” Stein said. He and Calais are working with other researchers on a computer model that may help show what’s going on.
As the above map suggests, that’s certainly close enough for discomfort to major populated areas and transportation corridors. I am not a seismologist, but I would suggest that the seismic risk warrants further investigation in both the New Madrid and Wabash fault regions.
So any way you slice it, there’s a significant seismic risk in the central US, and residents and business owners in those states need to think about how to cope with it.
Federal boondoggles bleed money and attention away from real priorities
Not long ago, the New Madrid fault enjoyed a brief flurry of attention in the media and the trade press. I remember seeing a very informative show, part of the Mega-Disasters series on The History Channel, about present-day seismic dangers in the New Madrid fault zone. But as of this writing, only a cursory mention of the 1811-1812 New Madrid earthquake - and no mention of the Mega-Disasters episode - is on their website.
The July 2007 issue of TVPPA News, which describes itself as the magazine for electric system management in the Tennessee Valley, featured an article entitled “New Madrid: Is the Valley Quake-Ready?”
When Don Drumm and several of his TVA colleagues dealt with a New Madrid fault earthquake late last year, it was only a drill. The consequence of the real thing, he said, could be described with one word. “I wouldn’t call it catastrophic,” he said. “I’d call it cataclysmic.”
As far as I have been able to determine, earthquake preparedness in the New Madrid zone has departed from the public’s radar screen. Little or nothing is being said about it at present. One obvious reason is that the pre-Climategate campaign against “global warming,” the current economic depression, and the misnamed “economic stimulus” tax-and-spend program, have bled away both attention and available funds.
With all the deceptive fanfare about the “economic stimulus money” that was supposed to be spent on “shovel-ready infrastructure projects” throughout the US, I have heard absolutely no mention whatsoever of any plans to strengthen the buildings, highways, rail corridors, fuel pipelines, and other infrastructure in the vicinity of New Madrid. Taxpayers’ money is being squandered on all manner of ridiculous, irrelevant, and counterproductive causes and beneficiaries - everything from bailing out Wall Street arch-criminals to nonexistent “green jobs” to crippling what’s left of domestic industry by enacting draconian regulations against “global warming.” There was never any intention of allowing states and cities, much less private companies and organizations, to set their own priorities regarding how best to prepare for the future.
Crying wolf
As readers of my other blog already know, the recent “Climategate” scandal has eroded the credibility of the scientific community in general. The long and the short of it is that the “powers that be” in the scientific community have been caught “crying wolf” for several decades. So when scientists tell us to account for seismic risks in our plans to build or upgrade infrastructure in the central US, it’s no surprise that financially beleaguered cities, states, contractors, utility companies, and other corporations and organizations ignore their warnings and go on with “business as usual.”
The answer? State sovereignty and local privatization
We need to oust the federal government from control over our finances, our commerce (including, but not limited to, health care), and our disaster preparedness. At the VERY least, we need a Constitutional amendment to repeal the flagrantly abused “commerce clause.” I do not believe that this is enough. I see the need for dismantling the federal government once and for all, in much the same way as the former Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact was dissolved. The federal government has failed in all of the duties for which it was originally formed. Even the smallest of the individual States are big enough to take care of themselves. It’s time for a new “velvet divorce” - stateside version. The way to get there without bloodshed is by educating people, and that is what this blog aims to do.
Watch this space for more on this topic!
Dixie flag flies as a symbol of liberty as the Berlin Wall comes down
Ryan Randazzo and Allison Denny The Arizona Republic Nov. 3, 2007 12:00 AM
Sheriff’s detectives continue to investigate how a pipe bomb got into a contract worker’s pickup bed Friday, triggering a lockdown of Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station and trapping thousands of employees there for about seven hours.
Roger W. Hurd, 61, of Hartsville, S.C., said he was unaware of a pipe bomb in his maroon Ford when he was stopped by Arizona Public Service Co. security officials at the entrance of the nation’s top-producing nuclear plant, sheriff’s officials said.
APS security did not find more explosives after an extensive search of the plant and its grounds, located about 50 miles west of downtown Phoenix, eventually lifting the lockdown at about 3 p.m., the utility said.
. . .
Maricopa County sheriff’s deputies found nothing connecting Hurd to the incident after a search of his Goodyear apartment, Arpaio said.
“We feel the person driving the truck, according to him and the investigation so far, didn’t have anything to do with it,” Arpaio said.
Hurd was not arrested but was held for questioning at the checkpoint before leading investigators to his apartment. Arpaio said he did not expect Hurd to face charges.
It does not appear Hurd is a terrorist, said Capt. Paul Chagolla, a sheriff’s spokesman.
“No nexus with terrorism is in our investigation at this point,” Chagolla said.
The upshot:
The contractor who drove the vehicle is not considered to be a suspect. The security worked well enough to keep the vehicle with the pipe bomb from approaching the nuke plant. But this shows how easy it is to plant an IED or other contraband in or on someone’s vehicle, either to discredit the owner of the vehicle, to boobytrap the vehicle, or to cause other harm that will be blamed on innocent parties.
In the interests of accuracy…
One of my pet peeves is the delivery of an announcement ruling out terrorism, even before investigators have any clue about the incident.
In this case, it would have been more accurate for the spokespeople to have acknowledged that Hurd is not a suspect, that they don’t have a suspect yet, and that it is too soon to rule in or out terrorism on the part of anyone else.
Why do news stories about security incidents tell us so little?
Why are suspects’ names and backgrounds so often omitted from the news when the incident involves national security? What is being kept from us?
Typical reasons:
No real suspect has yet been identified: Something dangerous was found, but it’s too soon to say how it got there, or why. This appears to have been the case in this incident.
Downplaying faulty or inadequate security procedures: There are doubts as to whether security procedures were properly designed and enforced, and nobody wants to look bad in the news.
Political correctness: News media and the authorities typically keep identifying information away from the public whenever a suspect is from a predominantly Muslim country, or has a Muslim name–or when there is some evidence of terrorist ties or motives. It’s politically incorrect to talk about such things! As in the case with the Virginia Tech mass murderer, someone can be motivated at least in part by an interest in Islam or jihadism even if he or she is from a part of the world where few people have such associations.
Don’t let the public start asking about personnel policy…
Does the facility hire foreign workers under the H-1b visa program? This could explain an across-the-board policy decision to delay or avoid answering any questions about security incidents. In this day of mandatory “diversity” at all costs, the powers that be wouldn’t want taxpayers and voters to wonder about the obvious security risks inherent in allowing noncitizens to work in IT and engineering jobs at all, much less in a nuclear plant, of all places!
What about background checks?
For a US citizen, an employer can complete an ordinary pre-employment background check in less than a day. That’s fine for a person working as a cashier in a retail store, but that wouldn’t do for a nuke plant worker! A more thorough background investigation, such as that required for a security clearance, can take many months. The only reason that such an investigation can be completed at all is because, for a US citizen, information is available for verification from trusted sources in the US.
There is simply no way to verify such background information with regard to a foreigner with the same degree of completeness, promptness, and accuracy. Given the fact that we are at war, how can anybody possibly think that it is worth the risk to hire foreigners for jobs that allow any kind of access to American IT or engineering infrastructure?
For more government and media obfuscation and foot-dragging, see:
Here is the original, low-res version of this comical, yet oddly true-to-life, e-pamphlet. It appeared on the nonist, which is a beautifully designed art/photo/history site. But if you’re afraid of spiders, the nonist blog post for 9/15/07 is about a giant spider web!
The Fresh Loaf is a huge website all about bread and baking. Yum! They have a news aggregator, bread baking lessons, all sorts of things. Their email address is at the very bottom of their webpage.
Hmmm…that gives me an idea. Since The Fresh Loaf is a news aggregator, would any of you readers like to write to The Fresh Loaf and tell them about the problems with SonicWALL censorware on the Panera Bread WiFi?
Into geography? The Northwest Passage may exist after all.
The explorers of old searched for centuries to find the fabled Northwest Passage from Europe to Asia by water. They never found it, because no such passage existed at that time. But that’s about to change.
What we call “global warming” is part of a natural cycle, and it isn’t all bad. This article, Northwest Passage Ice Shrinks to New Low, explains that melting of the Arctic ice pack will soon allow ships to make the passage during the summer. It will also open up a potentially oil-rich region for exploration.
When that happens, be prepared for a showdown here in the US. You can expect that left-wing environmentalists will render aid and comfort to the jihadists by doing all they can to stop any exploration for oil that could lessen our dependence on sources in the Middle East.
Michelle Malkin gives us an update on the Goose Creek pipe bomb boys, Yousef Megahed and Ahmed Mohamed, who were caught with explosives near a South Carolina naval base. Visit her site and find out what their bizarre plot was all about!
Evil jihadist “allies” that the US and EU inherited from Bill and Hillary Clinton: This article offers massive evidence that the Albanian KLA/UCK - not the Serbs - were responsible for the tide of Kosovo refugees during the 1999 NATO bombardment. The KLA has used many names for itself, but it continues to be a savage jihadist/narcoterrorist mob that is also the local branch of al Qaeda.
Need something to write about for your own blog?
1389 Message Blog is 1389’s other blog. It’s a place where 1389 puts links to interesting articles and news stories, both for future reference and for everyone’s use. Raid those links to your heart’s content!
Freedom of speech in the blogosphere
If you are uncomfortable with the use of the word evil, be advised that there is a difference between good and evil. The attack on September 11, 2001, was, and is, evil. It is not “hate speech” to label evildoers and evil deeds for what they are.
Society can survive only as long as enough people know good from evil and protect that which is good. We are not motivated by hatred, but by love for the Lord and for all His creation, especially our family, home, neighbors, friends, and country. Refusing to recognize evil when you encounter it will only leave you defenseless against it.
Why do we have to explain such a simple thing? By choosing to go up against jihadists, we have made some enemies, exactly as we expected would happen. Our adversaries are trying to shut down access to this blog, and other antijihadist/counterterrorist blogs, by falsely reporting it to content-filtering or “censorware” vendors as containing “hate/racism/violence”. This sharply reduces the number of places from which our audience can access our sites.
But if you look at 1389 Blog, you will find that there is no hate speech on this blog. No trash talk. No incitement to violence. No mention of anything pertaining to racial issues. No ad hominem attacks. No bloody pictures. Comments are moderated, and we don’t even allow swear words.
Any site that does not go along with the prevailing left-wing “political correctness” - especially sites that expose jihadist acivities - is at risk for the same type of de facto censorship. Follow this category link to keep track of our efforts to preserve freedom of speech in the blogosphere.
According to the June 21 article by the Banja Luka daily Fokus, titled “Albanian Mafia Bought Ahtisaari,” German Federal Intelligence Service BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst) has recently sent a report to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon revealing that Albanian separatists and terrorists in Serbian Kosovo-Metohija province have literally purchased Ahtisaari’s plan which suggests independence for the Serbian province and its severing from Serbia.
German Secret Service has found that 2 million Euros (2.68 million USD) have been transfered directly to Ahtisaari’s personal bank account, and that amounts of multi-million Euros were given to the UN envoy in cash on at least two occasions, totaling up to 40 million Euros (over 53 million U.S. dollars).
Oh, and by the way, KFOR NATO troops are involved:
On the last day of February, at 11:47 p.m., German Secret Service agents made a note about the arrival of the KFOR (NATO troops stationed in Serbian Kosovo province, Kosovo FORce) jeep which brought two young women over, followed by Boria’s bodyguard. The girls were in Ahtisaari’s quarters until 5:17 a.m., when they were driven away by the same vehicle.
This is particularly awkward now, because GWB has been making a big push to turn over control of Kosovo to Albanian Muslim narcoterrorists, which is not only insane, but also violates the treaty that the U.S. signed at the end of the Kosovo War. (See Updated: Was GWB’s wristwatch stolen while he was meeting a crowd in Albania? and How the U.S. and NATO were duped in the Balkans.) The only thing that can be said for GWB in this regard is that his Democrat opponents would have tried to do the same thing even sooner.
Okay, so I’m old. This huge UN Albanian-narcoterrorist bribery scandal reminded me of a long trail of other scandals: Libyagate (starring Billy Carter), Abscam, Iran arms-for-hostages, BCCI, UN oil-for-food, and now, Bill and Hillary cashing in from Qatar, and the Bush family’s close ties to the Bin Ladin Group. (Yes, THAT Bin Ladin Group; they’ve altered the English-language spelling, but yes, they are OBL’s relatives!) To put icing on the cake, there’s Venezuela, with Chavez’ ominously cozy relationship with Ahmadinejad, Iran’s nuclear neo-Nazi.
So what made me think of all these other scandals? What common thread has linked every major scandal of the western world in the late 20th and early 21st centuries?
They’re are all about foreign money from Muslim sources being used to corrupt politicians and bureaucrats in the U.S., Europe, Latin America, and the UN. It’s as simple as that.
In the U.S., this money has bought politicians wholesale on both sides of the aisle. The corruption is so pervasive that it’s not even about partisan politics; it’s about the blindly selfish, and in fact treasonous, pursuit of power and wealth. The funding is not only coming from Muslim petrodollars, but also from Albanian crime syndicate money (from drug-running, arms-smuggling, slave-trading, and wholesale looting), Taliban opium money, diverted foreign aid, you name it.
What to do? Many people won’t want to hear the answer, but that isn’t my problem. I calls ‘em as I sees ‘em, and I don’t care whether anybody likes it or not.
We can’t afford to keep doing business with our enemies. Our enemies include every Islamist and every jihadist-sympathizer on the planet, and every government that openly or covertly promotes jihadism. Yes, that adds up to an awful lot of people. Our foes have already chosen that path. Our failure to acknowledge it will not make them go away. They see it as a war of extermination against us, and we have no choice but to defeat them.
What does “not doing business with the enemy” mean in practice?
This means we have to bite the bullet and achieve complete energy independence as soon as possible, and by every means available.
This means building clean-coal and nuclear power plants, wind farms, synfuel facilities, you name it. We need to stop putting roadblocks in the way of everyone who is trying to help achieve energy independence. For example, when a reputable electric power company wants to build a new clean-coal plant or a nuke plant, making use of resources that the U.S. has in abundance, the authorities should let them proceed as soon as a good plan is in place. And we should go ahead and drill for oil in uninhabitable wilderness regions.
This means we must finally debunk all of this propaganda that blames us - and our desire to maintain a standard of living compatible with civilized life - for “global warming.” Is Mars also warming up because we’ve been driving too many SUVs on the red planet? Claiming that there is a “scientific consensus” on behalf of one’s political agenda does not mean that there actually is one! The people who started up this propaganda evidently hate people in general, and modern civilization in particular. More to the point, their political manipulations play into the hands of our foreign enemies. The only way to deal with them is to refute them once and for all, and then never listen to any of them ever again.
This means we stop making alliances with, and stop giving aid to, any Muslim nation, entity, or faction. It means we never again use U.S. military power to fight a war on behalf of Muslims under any circumstances whatsoever - no matter how much they flood the airwaves with fauxtography and stage elaborate hoaxes to play themselves up as the victims of whomever they want the U.S. to punish - and no matter how much they are paying our politicians under the table.
This means that we must stop educating and hiring aliens, including de facto enemy aliens, in preference to our own citizens. That would be an inexcusable outrage during peacetime, and it’s criminally insane when we are at war. It’s time to stop bringing in any foreign nationals from predominantly Muslim countries or regions, particularly in the fields of engineering and IT. It’s time to drastically scale back the student visa program, and to eliminate the thoroughly corrupt H-1b program entirely. We’ve been shutting out loyal, qualified, experienced, and hard-working Americans from jobs, and turning over large portions of America’s technical infrastructure to foreign nationals whose loyalty is clearly elsewhere.
None of these things are impossible, or even all that difficult, to do. It’s all a matter of growing up, facing facts, and seeing the world and its inhabitants as they are, not as we wish they would be. If we refuse to face facts, that will not stop the facts from facing us.
Rolling updates on the Ahtisaari bribery allegations:
Article in Serbian-language paper “Fokus”, Banja Luka, Republika Srpska, Bosnia
(posted in original article 6/25/07): Albanska mafija kupila Ahtisarija
Since publication of the Focus report and this opinon based on that report, new information suggests that the intelligence report the Bosnian Serb news agency Focus claims was filed at the UN apparently was never received by the UN.
Since the alleged report is the only piece of evidence provided in support of the claims by Focus, the claims in the Focus story - and the opinion below based on that, may be false. Please check back later for an update.
1389’s comment (added 6/28/07):
I remain convinced that there is an extremely high probability that this story is true. To begin with, the story comports with everything that has been going on in Kosovo since 1999. Moreover, the UN has an interest in attempting to bury an embarrassing story by having some unnamed individual claim that the UN never received such a document.
To the best of my knowledge, there have been no denials of culpability or involvement on the part of Ahtisaari, the Albanians, or anyone else. Nor has there been any official denial issued by any named individual or department at the UN.
I must point out that the failure to deny wrongdoing is tantamount to an admission of culpability. As someone who has neither accepted nor offered bribes, if some newspaper had accused me of such a thing, not only would I have denied it loudly and without delay, but I would have immediately contacted an attorney to talk about filing a suit for defamation.
The data collected by the GIS for South-Eastern Europe was published in the GIS Defense and Foreign Affairs section in the form of analysis which President of the American Council for Kosovo-Metohija Jim Jatras on Tuesday presented at a news conference in Belgrade. (added 7/10/07)
An appliance being designed for developing communities in Africa and Asia not only generates electricity, but also cooks and cools using acoustic technology.
The “Stove for Cooking, Refrigeration and Electricity,” or SCORE, could help improve the health and quality of life for the two billion or so people in the world who cook over open fires. When used in enclosed places, smoke from such fires can cause health problems.
This thermoacoustic stove, which is being developed at the University of Nottingham in the UK, requires far less firewood, which means less deforestation, less time spent gathering fuel, and less pollution from burning wood.
They’re giant Cuban tree frogs, they’re toxic, they have big appetites, and they’re an invasive exotic species. Despite their name, there’s no evidence that their presence here is due to a Castro plot. They came here from the Caribbean pet trade, and then made a break for it or were turned loose by irresponsible pet owners.
Here are some great pix and a detailed article, courtesy of the University of Florida Wildlife Extension. They come in many different colors; it’s almost too bad they’re so darned cute! But then, they are an exotic species, so you are allowed to keep them as pets - confined safely indoors.
Update:More than half of Florida gas stations on evacuation routes must install generators. These generators are required by law, so that gas stations will be able to continue pumping gas to vehicles on the evacuation routes, even if a storm knocks out power. Too many gas stations have not yet complied. According to the article: “In past years, some stations have had gas in their tanks, but no way to pump it out because of power outages.”
The National Interagency Fire Center website indicates that some wildfires are still burning in Florida and Georgia. No surprise there; smoke is still visible (and smellable) in south Florida.
There’s also dissention among the ranks of U.S. government weather officialdom, as well as disputes about where the money is going; see NOAA confirms cut in Hurricane Hunter funding.
Not all of the news is bad. Prominent forecasters, including the Florida Power & Light hurricane specialist, are getting ready to launch a one-stop storm help website.
