A commenter asks how our homes in Louisiana would be rated against a moderate earthquake. That is a good question.
Out of curiosity, how much damage would a mid-sized earthquake (4-5 on the Richter scale) do in Louisiana?
Damn good question, and I don't have an answer for you. Depending on the soil type, the big problem might be liquefaction, where the dirt turns to soft mud. I do know that both my home and my shop are rated for 125 mph (Category 3) winds. Here in central Louisiana we are subjected to tropical storms, and we have had Cat 2 gusts. Everything held up fine.
But how would we do in a real earthquake? That might get interesting.
8 comments:
That IS a good question...
I just had a thought about what would happen if New Orleans got hit with an earthquake of decent magnitude. That would probably make Katrina seem like child's play. No warning time to prepare (not that the city did prep for Katrina), just happening NOW.
Depending on the soil type, the big problem might be liquefaction, where the dirt turns to soft mud.
That would be N'awlins, big time.
I have read sometime ago that the New Madrid fault was capable of producing a quake that could liquefy the delta deposits along the Mississippi river returning the Gulf of Mexico up to Baton Rouge. Earthquake construction in these areas would be a waste. Bob in B.R.
LA has a lot of brick and masonry homes. Non reinforced brick/ masonry tends to do badly in earth quakes.
Also not so much where you live but in other parts of the state there are a lot of levy’s and such which might get messed up.
A couple of related sources:
https://www.lsu.edu/lgs/publications/products/Free_publications/La-earthquakes.pdf
https://www.wwltv.com/article/news/local/the-breakdown/the-breakdown-how-rare-was-sundays-33-magnitude-earthquake-in-the-gulf-louisiana-new-orleans-news/289-a090fb5d-9442-4337-a039-70212683ba8c
I checked the USGS site (with banner of commitment to DEI atop) but didn't find anything.
The problem with the New Madrid fault seems to be that although it can produce enormous quakes it manages to be relatively quiescent betwwen them. Makes it easy to ignore the risk when there aren’t frequent small to medium reminders. Here in coastal California we don’t have that luxury - since I moved to the SF Bay area 40+ years back I’ve been through more quakes than I can readily count, from tiny to the Loma Prieta sorta-big-one (6.9). I don’t like ‘em, but they’re part of life. Our house was built in ‘62, so it’s weathered them all with minimal damage.
Now hurricanes worry me and tornadoes flat out scare me - even a moderate wind storm here would do a lot more damage than I expect you’d see anywhere on the Gulf Coast.
Just saw this story about earthquake risk in the US linked from Instapundit, with an interesting map:
https://phys.org/news/2024-01-earthquakes.html
I see that most of California is included, since they define "high risk" as "everyone feels it, potential for at least some damage". And yes, the New Madrid fault shows up, though maximum risk seems highly localized.
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