Big California quake would likely devastate state
Modern skyscrapers built to the state's now-rigorous building codes might ride out the big jolt that experts say is all but inevitable, but the surviving buildings will tower over a carpet of rubble from older structures that have collapsed.
Hot desert winds could fan fires that quakes inevitably cause, overwhelming fire departments, even as ancient water pipelines burst, engineers and architects say.
Part of the lesson from the disaster that hit Japan on Friday is that no amount of preparation can fully protect a region such as California that sits on top of fault lines.
Even so, critics fear the state may have long skimped on retrofitting older buildings. Yet the cost of cleaning up after a big quake is likely to be much higher than the cost of even the most expensive prevention, they warn.
"Everybody is playing a gamble that something like this won't happen," said Dana Buntrock, associate professor of architecture, at the University of California, Berkeley.
Buntrock, like many others, sees California's past as a present danger. The university is spending more than $300 million to retrofit and renovate its ancient sports stadium, tucked into the hills overlooking the bay.
"The concrete high-rises that rose in the years after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake were made without adequate reinforcing steel, while homes and apartment complexes that are built atop of ground-floor parking lots are among the most vulnerable structures in the state.
"The question is not if but when Southern California will be hit by a major earthquake - one so damaging that it will permanently change lives and livelihoods in the region," according to a 2008 study by the United States Geological Survey study.
Geologists say a big earthquake in California would probably top out at a magnitude 8 as the state's fault structures are different from Japan's.
A quake of the 7.8 magnitude in the USGS study would have about 30 times less power than the one that struck Japan.
Forecasters in 2008 saw a 99 percent chance of a 6.7 magnitude quake within three decades, and 46 percent chance of a 7.5 or greater, with Southern California the likely center.
A monster California quake of magnitude 8 had only about a 4 percent probability - except in far Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. That area has a 10 percent chance of experiencing a magnitude 8 to 9 quake - Japan-sized - in the next 30 years.
Even a smaller 7.2 quake would cause $30 billion in building damage, $10 billion more in additional costs - and if fires sweep the city, damage could rise by $4 billion, the report sponsored by the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection concluded. About 27,000 of the city's 160,000 buildings would become unsafe to occupy; Kazinform cites Arab News.
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