Pictures of welding on the jerry can -- converted to fuel tank

I believe that I am not close to it. I did research it at some point, after reading a fiction book about this fault.

i

They probably did the math and calculated that the probability and expected duration of any electricity disruptions do not economically justify buying a generator and maintaining it.

i

Not close..or not in the effected zone?

Gunner

"Aren't cats Libertarian? They just want to be left alone. I think our dog is a Democrat, as he is always looking for a handout" Unknown Usnet Poster

Heh, heh, I'm pretty sure my dog is a liberal - he has no balls. Keyton

Posted on Fri, Sep. 26, 2008 New Madrid fault: earthquake threat is real Published June 10, 1984 By Andy Mead Herald-Leader Staff Writer ST. LOUIS -- Take a green stick and start bending it. At first, not much happens. Then, just before the stick breaks, you hear small pops and cracks coming from inside.

That's how Dr. Otto Nuttli of St. Louis University describes what is happening in the New Madrid earthquake zone. Every other day or so, the land underneath the area where Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri and Indiana meet pops and cracks just a little.

The results are minor earthquakes, most so light that they are felt only by the delicate seismographs that Nuttli has stationed throughout the zone.

But, the scientist said, the pressure is building for a break -- a major earthquake that could conceivably devastate much of the nation's midsection, causing thousands of deaths and billions of dollars in damages.

"The possibility is there," he said. "Enough energy has been stored up to produce a damaging quake today, tomorrow, in the next decade -- we don't know enough to predict when."

One thing he knows for certain: It's happened before. At 2 a.m. on Dec.

16, 1811, the ground underneath the tiny town of New Madrid, Mo., moved, and that movement produced the greatest earthquake in the history of the United States. Later estimates have placed the magnitude of the quake as high as 8.7 on the Richter scale.

The earth literally ripped apart in some areas closest to the earthquake epicenter. The ground rolled. Trees swayed. Great landslides swept downward.

Rapids rose in the Mississippi River, which appeared to run backward for a while. Islands in the river sank from view. Reelfoot Lake was formed in Tennessee.

An Eddyville, Ky., shipbuilder named Matthew Lyon had just completed and loaded with provisions a flotilla of boats for Gen. Andrew Jackson to use in the battle of New Orleans. They were all swamped and lost.

The earthquake shook all of Kentucky, causing some cracked walls and fallen chimneys in Lexington. Church bells rang in Washington, D.C. Pavement cracked in Richmond, Va.

Shocks were felt in Canada, along the Eastern Seaboard and near the Gulf of Mexico.

That was Act I. Another quake nearly as large occurred on Jan. 23, 1812, and another on Feb. 7.

There were many, many smaller shocks. Jared Brooks, an engineer who was living about 250 miles northeast of New Madrid in Louisville, Ky., set up a system of pendulums and springs to measure them. He recorded 1,874 aftershocks in three months, more than 300 of which were strong enough to cause damage.

Despite the tremendous intensity of the quakes, property damage and loss of life were relatively light. The hardest-hit areas were sparsely populated. Most people lived in simple, one-story wooden houses. Their transportation was horses, mules and feet. They could hunt game and were largely self-sufficient.

Today it's a different story. Cities have grown up near the fault. Paducah, Ky., Memphis, Tenn., and Evansville, Ind., would be hit hard by a repeat of the 1811 earthquake.

About 12.6 million people live in an area that would receive extensive damage. Many of those people work or live in high-rise buildings. They depend on bridges, highways, telephone lines and electricity. They have built dams that could crumble if shaken hard and gas transmission lines that could rupture.

Food supply lines could break down. Vital computer systems could fail. Even a quake that produced little structural damage could cause great economic damage if it knocked out increasingly important computer systems, Nuttli said.

"Because our lifestyles are so different, we are much more vulnerable today," he said.

In terms of rescue needs, Nuttli has compared the consequences of a great quake to a nuclear war. It would require more than, say, sending the National Guard from a dry part of the state to a part where flooding is taking place. There would be very few "dry," or unshaken, places left from which to stage rescue efforts.

The Kentucky Task Force on Earthquake Hazards and Safety, which presented a report to then-Gov. John Y. Brown Jr. last summer, concluded that most of the state's population would be "at risk" during a major earthquake.

The quake would be worst in river towns and cities where the ground is less stable. The task force's report mentioned Covington, Maysville, Louisville, Owensboro, Henderson, Paducah, Madisonville, Hopkinsville, Wickliffe, Benton, Mayfield, Murray, Calvert City and Fulton.

The task force cited a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers inventory of Kentucky dams that listed 210 dams as "high hazard," 75 as "unsafe," and five as ''urgent." It also quoted a U.S. Geological Survey Report:

"Few dams in the region have been designed to withstand earthquake loads. The superposition of earthquake loads on dams of already unsafe structures suggests that a substantial number of dam failures can reasonably be expected in any major earthquake which affects the Central United States."

Just as no one knows when another earthquake may hit the region, no one knows how severe the next quake might be. There are, however, some educated guesses.

Fortunately, Nuttli said, another earthquake in the 8.7 range is not expected anytime soon. Earthquakes of that magnitude seem to occur in the New Madrid area every 600 years or so, he said.

The energy that had built up underground before the earthquakes of 1811 and 1812 was spent during those quakes, Nuttli said. He doesn't believe there has been time to store enough energy for a quake of an 8.7 magnitude.

But he does believe that the New Madrid fault has built up enough energy to start regularly reminding people that it is there.

"I expect a lot more activity in the next 150 years than we have had in the last 150 years," Nuttli said.

His studies show that there is enough stored energy -- the stick is bent far enough -to produce an earthquake of 7.6 on the Richter scale.

A quake of that size would be felt by half the population of the United States and by Kentuckians in all parts of the state. There would be considerable damage in Western Kentucky. The ground would shake very strongly in Lexington, where walls would crack and plaster would fall.

Even more likely in the next several years is an earthquake with a magnitude of 6 or 6.5. Earthquakes of that size occur in the New Madrid fault about every 75 years. There was one in 1843 and another in 1875 that caused damage in St. Louis, which is about 200 miles north of New Madrid. Nuttli thinks the odds are good that another quake of that size will occur before the end of the century.

The danger of an earthquake in America's heartland has been largely overlooked until recently because most people assumed -- incorrectly -- that the greatest threat of a major earthquake exists along California's San Andreas fault.

But, awareness of the New Madrid fault is increasing, and it appears that finally something may be done about an earthquake before it happens.

Part of a four-day National Earthquake Conference that ended in St. Louis last week was the first meeting of a new organization called the Central United States Earthquake Consortium.

The consortium, established in April with a $300,000 budget from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, includes representatives from Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Missouri and Kentucky. It has two purposes -- to look for ways to offset the damages expected from an earthquake, and to react with rescue efforts after a quake occurs.

"We will be discussing how we go about making a quantum leap in earthquake hazard reduction," said Lacy Suiter, who is Tennessee's director of emergency management as well as chairman of the consortium. "A quantum leap may be taking the first step."

One of the reasons there has been so little earthquake planning in the region, experts agree, is because so few people are aware of the potential danger.

"In the Eastern and Central United States, we just don't know much about earthquakes because they happen so infrequently," said Ron Street, a seismologist at the University of Kentucky.

The 5.2-magnitude quake that was shook much of Central Kentucky four years ago took everyone by surprise because it was so unexpected, he said. That quake was centered on Sharpsburg in Bath County and was not related to the New Madrid fault.

Until the last decade or so, very little was known about the New Madrid fault. Unlike the more active San Andreas fault, which in some places in California can be seen on the surface, the New Madrid lies from 1,000 to

10,000 feet underground. Nuttli said it is part of a rift zone that formed sometime between 500 million and a billion years ago, when the land mass was attempting to split and create a new ocean.

It has been long since covered with river deposits, and out of sight meant it was out of mind. The fault was "discovered" in 1911, when a scientist named Myron Fuller visited the fault area. Although a century had passed since the great quakes, he found evidence of their damage.

St. Louis University got its first seismograph in 1909, but up until a decade ago the fault zone still wasn't clearly defined.

"People knew there had been earthquakes there, but they were looked on as more of a curiosity than anything else," Nuttli said.

In 1970, Nuttli began the first extensive modern studies of the fault. In 1974, he filled the area with seismographs and began recording several small quakes each week.

Nuttli learned other things about the fault: The earthquakes it produces create a lot more ground motion over a wider area than a quake of similar intensity in California. "The San Andreas fault is five times more likely to cause an earthquake," he said. "But with the New Madrid fault, the area of damage can be 20 times greater."

Despite Nuttli's work, many people still don't believe an earthquake in the Central United States is anything to worry about.

"Most people have not experienced an earthquake in their lifetimes, so there is a lot of complacency," said Dr. Arch Johnston, director of the Tennessee Earthquake Information Center in Memphis. "There are a lot of shortrange problems. Getting something done about the long-range problems is difficult.

"The problem is we're talking about a rare event, but one that could cause great damage."

Ten years ago, Johnston said, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development produced a study of the damage Memphis could expect from a major earthquake in the year 2000. The study said that a quake on a weekday, when children are in schools and workers are in office buildings, could cost 3,000 lives and $1.3 billion damage in Memphis.

Despite the study, he said, buildings are going up in Memphis that are not earthquakeresistant. He hopes the new consortium will promote advances in areas such as building codes.

But what the consortium is attempting to do -- cut across state lines to provide greater cooperation -- carries built-in problems. Governors and state legislators closely guard their rights to set building standards and run disaster management programs.

"It's like there are several hundred egos out there that need to be soothed before you can get anything done," said Suiter, the consortium chairman.

The Kentucky earthquake task force presented a list of recommendations last summer that included an awareness and education program; putting field hospitals and emergency supplies in place in areas that would be hardest hit; stronger building codes; dam safety legislation; and new guidelines for storing hazardous wastes.

What has happened to those recommendations in the last year is that an advisory panel has been chosen to recommend how to carry them out, said Wilbur Buntin, executive director of the Kentucky Division of Disaster and Emergency Services. The names of those panel members will be announced soon, he said.

Meanwhile, Buntin said his agency is engaged in a two-year program to educate local disaster officials in Kentucky on how to deal with earthquakes.

None of this will prevent the next earthquake, but it may help.

"No matter what we do, there will be a loss of property and a loss of life," Dr. Samuel Speck of the Federal Emergency Management Agency told the earthquake conference last week. "The question is, what can we do to mitigate that."

"Aren't cats Libertarian? They just want to be left alone. I think our dog is a Democrat, as he is always looking for a handout" Unknown Usnet Poster

Heh, heh, I'm pretty sure my dog is a liberal - he has no balls. Keyton

It is at least 200 mile distance. This means that any effects of an earthquake there would be modest where I live.

i

It is basically very far from me.

i

Let the Record show that Gunner Asch on or about Tue, 01 Dec 2009 02:45:45 -0800 did write/type or cause to appear in rec.crafts.metalworking the following:

As the man said as he fell past the tenth floor "So far, so good!"

tschus pyotr

- pyotr filipivich We will drink no whiskey before its nine. It's eight fifty eight. Close enough!

There was a proposal that all new gas stations (And ones that have any major renovations) have a standard connector & transfer switch to allow a portable generator be brought in to pump out the tanks and operate a few lights. The big problem with generators at every station is 'Who is going to maintain them'? Most gasoline is sold by convenience stores around here. Do you expect a barely literate, pimple faced kid to do the required work? They can't even keep the coolers & AC working in a lot of places.

By requiring a sub panel for the pumps and selected lights, it is a simple manual switchover when the generator is brought in.

More important, the liability of being open for business during a major power outage or disaster.

A lot of telecom facilities operate the same way with and outside generator connection and transfer switch vs. permanent generator. It avoids a lot of permitting and tax hassles from a fixed installation, allows a smaller pool of towable generators to handle the emergencies and allows those generators to be maintained and serviced in a central location.

Now, that's an interesting idea. Portable generator with roto lock connector or something? Know what you mean about the store operators. Many of them don't appear to be mechanically minded. Who will buy and maintain all the generators for occasional use?

I've heard that's a total nightmare during ice storm, when the roads are ice.

Shrug...yet you think you will be uneffected if it lets go?

Just how far ranging was the effect, compared to a quake of similar Richter on the West Coast?

Earthquakes in the central or eastern United States affect much larger areas than earthquakes of similar magnitude in the western United States. For example, the San Francisco, California, earthquake of 1906 (magnitude 7.8) was felt 350 miles away in the middle of Nevada, whereas the New Madrid earthquake of December 1811 (magnitude 8.0) rang church bells in Boston, Massachusetts, 1,000 miles away. Differences in geology east and west of the Rocky Mountains cause this strong contrast. [And more recently] earthquakes of similar magnitude-the 1895 Charleston, Missouri, earthquake in the New Madrid seismic zone and the 1994 Northridge, California, earthquake, [showed similar effects]. The [quake] in 1968, centered in southeastern Illinois near the confluence of the Tennessee and Ohio rivers, caused moderate damage, but it was felt across 23 states -- as far as the Carolinas -- and into Canada.

For the New Madrid disaster, affecting cities from Houston to St. Louis to Kansas City to Memphis to Cincinnati to Chicago and parts in between, the number of people left suddenly homeless will be immense, compared to New Orleans. These cities are not quake proofed, as is the norm on the West Coast. Lets look at the New Orleans disaster for a preview of what to expect, insofar as rescue attempts.

Shrug...I hope you are right.

Gunner

"Aren't cats Libertarian? They just want to be left alone. I think our dog is a Democrat, as he is always looking for a handout" Unknown Usnet Poster

Heh, heh, I'm pretty sure my dog is a liberal - he has no balls. Keyton

>

I think that I will be unaffected, yes. Maybe some broken dishes, if that.

i

The county EMC is supposed to have about a dozen trailer mounted generators to take to different stations if needed. They will be maintained for other uses, as well. That will defray the operating and maintenance costs. For instance, every pumping station for the waste treatment system already has the connectors, to allow the county to connect a generator in case of a long term power outage. The county has a few fuel tanker trucks, and it wouldn't be that hard to mount a generator on them to power the pumps at a gas station.

Cool! Then make sure you are stocked up on paper plates and you are good to go.

Never mind that pesky power failure state wide for weeks or months..you can drive your car down the road to a non working gas station and not get another 36 hours of fuel.

Good on you laddy!

Gunner

"Aren't cats Libertarian? They just want to be left alone. I think our dog is a Democrat, as he is always looking for a handout" Unknown Usnet Poster

Heh, heh, I'm pretty sure my dog is a liberal - he has no balls. Keyton

You cannot live life without taking chances. There is a big cost to stockpiling an excessive amount of crap in preparation to an event that will nost likely never come. I have covered 99% of all eventualities, and am prepared to suffer a bit in the other 1%, by stretching fuel over more days.

i

Not if the company in question has the proper trucks and trained crews.

Around here, they use so called "salt" and have so called "salt trucks" that spread said salt on roads.

It works great!

So I am taking it for granted that after a day (or usually less), I could drive a few miles to another area and get more diesel fuel.

i