Earthquakes and Society Chapter 2

Chapter 2 Out of sight - out of mind

Earthquakes in history and how they are viewed in modern culture

Nobody can claim that Californians don't know about the earthquakes in their backyard. Children learn in
school that they shall immediately "drop, cover and hold on" by crawling under a strong desk or a table
when they feel even a slight movement of the ground. News media in the state report on all channels
whenever a light earthquake is felt in a populated area. Government agencies and seismological
laboratories run by universities operate websites with up-to-the-minute information about all quakes
occurring along the West Coast of the United States. Many stores sell earthquake survival kits. Since it was
first introduced as the "Great California Shake-Out" in 2008, this annual earthquake drill is now performed
in dozens of seismically active regions to raise awareness that damaging quakes can occur at any moment.
The goal of the Shake-Out is to train citizens and corporations in earthquake preparedness.

But inspite of all that, every day thousands of motorists race along a major freeway over the summit of
Tejon Pass in the mountains north of Los Angeles, without noticing that they have just crossed the San
Andreas Fault. In fact, the largest quake in California's written history was named after a military
fortification which once stood not too far from the summit. On January 9, 1857 the Fort Tejon earthquake
with an estimated magnitude of 8 struck much of central and southern California. During the quake the
San Andreas Fault ruptured over a length of 360 km. At Tejon Pass, the two sides of the fault slipped
passed each other by more than 4 m. This offset has long since been covered by the concrete of the freeway,
hiding the fault from drivers speeding across it.

Fig. 2.1: The San Andreas Fault, indicated by the white line on the hill side, crosses Tejon Pass north of Los Angeles
adjacent to a major freeway. The grey rocks above belong to the Pacific Plate, the orangish rocks below are part of the
American Plate Foto: Horst Rademacher

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Not knowing where the most famous earthquake fault in the world crosses major roadways is one aspect
of the general nonchalance Californians display towards earthquakes. Much worse is the fact that only a
very small fraction of the population in the state is prepared to ride out a major temblor and its aftermath.
In a poll conducted in 2006 on the occasion of the centennial of the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906,
citizens of the city were asked about their earthquake preparedness. Less than 10 percent of the
respondents had made any preparations by stashing away drinking water, non-perishable food and
batteries in a safe place for use after a devastating quake. Even fewer people had plans on how to
communicate with loved ones, friends and colleagues following a quake. Relying on cell phones and
readily accessible internet connections, as we do on normal days, may be futile after cell towers and
switching stations are destroyed in an earthquake. Other lifelines, like train tracks, roads, the electrical
grid, water and gas pipes may be destroyed and out of operation for weeks or even months. Shopping with
anything except with cash may prove very difficult after an earthquake, when communication lines are
disrupted, ATM are out of service and credit card authorizations cannot be obtained, because of power
outages.

While public agencies, utility companies, hospitals and many private enterprises in California have
prepared to respond to an earthquake, the rate of preparedness by individuals is less than adequate - to say
the least. California is not the only seismically active place in the world, where the obvious earthquake
hazard is repressed in the minds of the population or even totally ignored. One of the reasons is certainly
that humans in general are not very good at evaluating the various hazards and risks which affect their
lives. For example, people may be afraid of a nuclear holocaust, which in today's post cold war world
carries a rather low risk, at the same time as they text while driving a car, which is clearly a highly risky
undertaking.

Another reason for the nonchalant personal attitude towards earthquakes has to do with the Earth itself.
Most physical and chemical processes which shape the Earth are rather slow. It took, for instance, at least 6
million years for the Colorado River to carve the Grand Canyon out of the rocks of the US-State of Arizona.
Given that its deepest point is about 1850 m below the rim, the average incision rate is about 0.3 mm per
year - way too slow for the human eye to perceive. Mount Etna, one of the largest and most active
volcanoes in Europe, began his fiery life about 500,000 years ago. Although since then its lava has piled up
to an elevation of more than 3300 m, its average growth rate was only about 6 mm per year. Again, this
annual elevation gain is far too small for humans to recognize.

While individual earthquakes happen extremely fast within seconds or at maximum a few minutes, the
processes within the Earth which lead to strong temblors are as slow as erosion or mountain building. Tens
or even hundreds of years can pass between two major earthquakes along the same section of a fault. Just
look at the earthquake zones along the West Coast of North America: Since the Fort Tejon earthquake
mentioned above, 170 years have passed without a major earthquake in southern California. The area
around San Francisco in northern California has not had a devastating quake in more than 110 years. The
last very big quake in the North American Pacific Northwest (the US-States of Oregon and Washington)
happened more than 300 years ago. Similar numbers are reported from earthquake zones all over the
Earth.

Compare such earthquake cycles, with their repeat times for large quakes along one section of a fault
measured in hundreds of years, with the typical time windows people experience in everyday life today:
There is the daily, 24 hour rhythm of sleep and awakeness; in the internet age, news cycles are measured in

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minutes and no longer in days anymore; cell phones ring constantly; appointment calendars are booked in
15 minute increments. In short: Because most humans are squeezing their lives into ever shorter time slots
their general perception is that the speed of life is becoming faster and faster. In today's hectic,
interconnected world fewer and fewer people think and reflect about long term processes in their lives, like
economic cycles, the changes in the fabric of society or their own aging.

When compared to such longer term processes on a human scale, geologic time passes even more slowly.
Strong earthquakes repeat in periods of many decades or more, volcanoes may be dormant for centuries.
Where the time perception of modern people and the geologic time scale overlap, as happens in all
tectonically active zones on Earth, there will be misunderstandings, misconceptions, or simple ignorance
on the human side. How can a geologic hazard, like the occurrence of a large earthquake, be taken
seriously, if it only happens once every century or so? How can people perceive a real threat from a natural
process that seems so rare, that several human generations may pass between two big earthquakes or
volcanic eruptions in the same area?

Of course, during their life times people who live in seismically active regions will have seen the effects of
devastating earthquakes on television or read about them in the press - but in most cases the destruction
will have been somewhere else and not in one's own backyard. Take California again: For the last several
decades the US West Coast was spared a major devastating quake, while other regions of the globe were
hit with catastrophic temblors, like southern Chile in 1960, Alaska in 1964, Sumatra and the shorelines of
the Indian Ocean in 2004, Haiti in 2010 and the east coast of Japan in 2011.

The facts that large earthquakes are rather rare on the human time scale and that destructive temblors
always seem to occur somewhere else, make it easy for the human
mind to repress and ignore the threat posed by seismic activity
under one's own feet. That in turn makes it even more difficult for
emergency planners to raise enough awareness about seismic risk
and make the population prepare properly - aside from the
common lethargy of man and the tendency of most people to
procrastinate.

However, wide spread ignorance about earthquake hazards is not

just a phenomenon of modern times. During most of history,
humans did not understand the causes of earthquakes and hence
one of their greatest fears was the unexpected sudden trembling
of the Earth. The most common myth about the causes of
earthquakes, believed by peoples all over the world and
throughout history, is that giant animals live deep underground.
In Japan for instance, it was the huge catfish Namazu. Its
movements were controlled by the god Kashima, who usually
immobilized the catfish by pressing a big stone against the fish's
head. Sometimes, however, the god got tired or distracted from
his duty and Namazu could move a bit. By slashing its tail, the
fish was able to shake
the entire earth. Fig. 2.2: In Japanese legends, the giant catfish Namazu
is responsible for generating earthquakes

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Similarly, the Algonquin, native peoples living in the North American Northeast, thought their world was
carried by a noble tortoise. Whenever it grew weary of supporting the planet it moved to find a more
comfortable position - and thus made the Earth shake. Other cultures had different beasts slumbering
beneath their feet: In China it was a frog, in the Philippines a snake. In Indian folklore it was even more
complicated because in their view the Earth was held up by four elephants, which stood on the back of a
turtle. The turtle in turn was balanced on a cobra. When one of these animals moved, the earth trembled
and shook. The Siberian native peoples had an almost practical view of the causes of the quakes, which
occur regularly in what is now the Russian far east: Their Earth rested on a sled driven by a god named
Tuli. The dogs who pull the sled had fleas and when the sled dogs stopped to scratch their pelts, the earth
shook.

Earthquakes obviously played an important role in ancient Greece, which ruled

the whole Eastern Mediterranean, then and now a seismically very active
region. In Greek mythology it was Poseidon, the god of the sea, who caused an
earthquake when he struck the Earth with his three-pronged fish spear, the
trident. However, the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC) may have been
the first person to try to explain that earthquakes are caused by natural forces
and not by mystic creatures or noble gods. In his view "the earth is essentially
dry, but rain fills it with moisture. Then the sun and its own fire warm it and
give rise to a quantity of wind both outside and inside it...." For him, it was the
winds blowing through underground caverns and occasionally escaping to the
Earth's surface, which caused the quakes. In simple terms, Aristotle proposed
earthquakes as being the result of the Earth's flatulence.
Fig. 2.3: Aristotle

About three hundred years later, the Roman philosopher Lucretius (99-55
BC) extended on Aristotle's original ideas. In book six of his work "On the
Nature of Things" (De Rerum Natura) Lucretius added rockfalls inside
underground caverns as causes for earthquakes. Almost a century later
another Roman philosopher, Seneca the Younger (4 BC - 65 AD), used those
different ideas in trying to explain the cause of a significant earthquake
which damaged the southern Italian towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum in
the year 62 AD. Seventeen years after this quake both towns, which had in
the meantime been rebuilt, were buried by meters of ash during a great
eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Today, the towns' ruins, partially excavated
from the ash, are a major tourist attraction in southern Italy.

With the expansion and finally the dominance of Christianity in Europe the
mythological views about the causes of earthquakes as well as the musings
of the ancient philosophers about this topic were quickly forgotten. One the
reason for this was that the Catholic church used earthquakes and
Fig. 2.4: Seneca the Younger other natural disasters as means to keep its flock in line. The trembling of
the Earth was interpreted as God's angry response to the sins of the believers.
Such a view, in which natural disasters are seen as the wrath of God, fits well into the moralistic
dominance which for centuries was claimed particularly by the Catholic Church. A priest could instill fear
into his parishioners by telling them that God would punish them with earthquakes if they did not behave

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according to God's will.

It is clear that under such repressive conditions nobody in earthquake prone regions prepared for his
survival in an earthquake - something we all should do today. Rather, people accepted their fate: If it is
God's will to punish me for my sins with an earthquake, there is nothing that I as a simple human being
can do about it. The occurrence of earthquakes was regarded as kismet, the temblors were seen as acts of
God. Some of that thinking can still be found in today's insurance world, where in some cases natural
disasters are termed as uninsurable force majeure or "acts of God".

In addition under the Church's repressive conditions nobody dared to try to scientifically investigate,
understand or, let alone, publicly explain the natural causes of earthquakes. Given the power of the church
and its inquisition, who would have been willing to be accused of heretic views in the sciences and face
the brutal consequences? The inquisition had set prominent examples in banning Galileo Galilei (1564-
1642) or burning Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) at the stake. Both had strongly argued that the geocentric
view of the universe which places the Earth in its center - a view the Church advocated - was wrong and
should be replaced by the correct view of the sun as the center of our planetary system (Galilei) and an
infinite universe (Bruno).

This fatalistic attitude towards earthquakes was about to change forever when a powerful temblor struck
Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, on All Saints Day (November 1 st) of the year 1755. At that time during the
middle of the 18th century Lisbon was one of the five largest cities in Europe. As a harbor town it was an
important hub in the trade between the Old World and its colonies. The 275,000 inhabitants of this proud
and extremely wealthy city were devoutly catholic. No wonder, that all of the 40 cathedrals and churches
in town were filled to the brim on that special day, when Catholics honor all their saints. During mass,
exactly at 9:40 in the morning, the city was suddenly shaken violently by seismic waves generated during

Fig. 2.5: Lisbon seen from the east during the 1755 earthquake.
(Copper engraving, Netherlands, 1756) - source: National Information Service for Earthquake Engineering image library

the biggest earthquake the European continent has seen in historic times. Thirty churches, many palaces
and countless houses collapsed. Those people who were not killed outright or trapped in the rubble, ran
down to the quays along the Tejo River - only to be swept away by one of the largest tsunamis ever
generated in the Atlantic Ocean. Its waves were up to 7 m high and destroyed everything in the lower part

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of the city. Fires consumed what was left standing on the hillsides. The casualties of this quake and its
aftermaths were never counted, but at least 60,000 people lost their lives. Today we estimate, that this
quake had a magnitude of almost 9.

Given the strong religious circumstances of that time, it was easy for the survivors to assume, that God had
struck the city with his wrath. Why else would a devastating earthquake occur exactly during mass time on
All Saints' Day? God had punished Lisbon for the sinful and immoral lifestyle of its inhabitants. But in the
Period of Enlightenment, which was sweeping through the salons and courts of Europe at that time, other
views about the cause of the devastating earthquake soon came into light. Voltaire (1694-1778), one of the
most brilliant figures of the European Enlightenment, was shocked by so much devastation. He wrote a
poem "Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne", in which he argued, that forces other than God must have been
responsible for such a disaster. Within a year Germany's foremost philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
had collected all available accounts of the quake and its effects, and published them together with his
comments and conclusions. In his comprehensive report, written in German, he concluded that the source
of the earthquake lay in cracks and caverns in the Atlantic Ocean. Although Kant was by no means an
Earth scientist his impressive scientific compendium is considered by many to be the beginning of the
systematic observation of natural phenomena and the first comprehensive report about an earthquake.
It took, however, another 150 years and another major earthquake disaster to really kick off seismological
science as we know it today. On April 18 th, 1906 at 5:12 in the morning, most people living in and around
San Francisco, then the most important city on the West Coast of North America, experienced a rude
awakening. They were shaken out of bed by powerful seismic waves generated by an earthquake out in the
ocean just a few kilometers off the Golden Gate. Although the earthquake had an estimated magnitude of
7.8 it looked at first as if the city of San Francisco with its 400,000 inhabitants had fared reasonably well.
While other towns in the area, like Santa Rosa to the North and San Jose and Salinas to the South lay in
ruins, the shaking itself had not devastated the city even though there was a lot of damage. That
assessment changed dramatically when the fire brigades realized, that they had hardly any water to
extinguish a number of small fires, which had spread from fireplaces as a consequence of the quake. The
reason for the dry fire hoses: except for one, all main water lines in the city had been destroyed by the
shaking. Within a day the small fires consolidated into a giant
conflagration, which ravaged through the city for more than 48 hours.
When the flames finally ran out of fuel, most of San Francisco was no
more - the city had become a burnt wasteland with more than 80 percent
of its buildings destroyed.(see figure 1.1)

From his office on the other side of San Francisco Bay Andrew Lawson
(1861-1952) was watching the thick smoke billowing above the raging
fires. Born in Scotland and educated in geology in Canada, Lawson had
become a professor at the University of California, Berkeley in 1892 and
as such studied the local geology of the San Francisco Bay Region. In 1895
he and his students investigated a rather long, extremely straight valley
south of the city and west of what is now the famous Silicon Valley. They
realized that this unusually straight feature in the landscape was a fault, a
geologic demarcation line which separated two distinct geologic settings.
Lawson named this feature the San Andreas Fault, after an elongated lake
which had its bed in the fault. Fig. 2.6: Andrew Lawson

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Not even Lawson knew at the time of discovery that the San Andreas Fault and the frequent earthquakes
in California had anything to do with one another.

But that was about to change after the big quake of 1906: Once the flames in San Francisco had died down,
Lawson assembled a team of prominent geologists from all over the United States. They fanned out over
northern California, and assessed the damage and recorded the changes in landscape associated with this
big temblor. During their investigation they quickly realized that the two distinct geologic units on either
side of the San Andreas Fault fault had moved during the earthquake. They had slipped passed each other
by up to 6 m. They also found that the fault covered a much larger area than just the elongated valley south
of San Francisco. In fact, the San Andreas Fault extends for a length of almost 1300 km from Cape
Mendocino in the North to the Salton Sea in extreme southern California. In between it goes exactly over
Tejon Pass, where it is now crossed by the busy freeway mentioned at the beginning of this chapter.

Lawson's team put together its findings in what is now famously known as the Lawson-Report. It contains
detailed descriptions about all effects the earthquake had on buildings, structures and - perhaps most
importantly - on the landscape in northern California. Even though a few other scientists had attempted it
before (see box 2.1), the authors had proven for the very first time in scientific history that a direct link
between a geologic fault and earthquakes exists. In fact, faults are the cause of earthquakes, because they
happen whenever the two flanks of a fault shift and slide past each other. That is, of course, not the end of
the story, because neither Lawson nor any of his coworkers knew at the time of their report, what forces
within the Earth actually make the flanks of a fault move and cause an earthquake. We will learn more
about that when we discuss earthquakes faults in greater detail in another chapter of this book.

Fig. 2.7: Damage in San Francisco's Marina District after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989

While of enormous value scientifically, the general public did not take much notice of the Lawson-Report.
People in the epicentral region were much more interested in rebuilding their dwellings and their
neighborhoods than in understanding the causes of earthquakes. By the time the Panama-Pacific
International Exhibition - a world's fair celebrating the completion of the Panama Canal - was opened in
San Francisco in 1915, the rebuilt city presented itself like a shining Phoenix having risen from the ashes of
the devastating quake nine years before. In fact, the 2.5 km 2 large exhibition ground along the waterfront

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had not existed prior to the quake. It was new land, reclaimed by dumping the millions of tons of rubble
and debris from the destroyed city into San Francisco Bay. Little did the city planners at that time know,
how dangerous this fill would become when hit by strong seismic waves. This became tragically obvious in
1989, when San Francisco was hit by the next strong quake, the so called Loma Prieta earthquake with a
magnitude of 6.9. During this temblor the unconsolidated fill under the former exhibition ground failed
and more than 60 buildings collapsed or went up in flames. Although this latest quake served as a
reminder that all of Northern California is under a large seismic threat, in its aftermath people acted in the
same way as their predecessors did after the quake of 1906. They cleaned up the rubble, rebuilt and went
on with their lives - once again putting out of their minds the enormous seismic hazard lurking under their
feet.

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Chapter summary:

Most people who live in a seismically active region repress or even ignore the threat posed by earthquakes.

One reason for the ignorance is the fact that the repeat time of major earthquakes can be tens or hundreds
of years. Such long time intervals are far too long for people to take into account in their fragmented
everyday life.

As a consequence most people in earthquake regions are not as prepared as they should be to deal with
an earthquake disaster and its aftermath.

A common belief by native peoples and early cultures throughout history was that earthquakes are caused
by giant animals slumbering deep underground. When they move, the Earth shakes.

Two philosophers of ancient times, Aristotle in Greece and Seneca in Rome, were the first to try to explain
the cause of an earthquake: They speculated that winds within voids and caverns inside the Earth make
the ground shake.

Because of the long dominance of the Catholic Church in Europe earthquakes were viewed as God's
punishment for common people's sins.

The earthquake of Lisbon in 1755 fell into the period of Enlightenment in Europe. Two of the continent's
foremost thinkers of that time, Voltaire and Kant, collected all available observations about the quake and
tried to explain its cause by natural forces.

The first ever scientifically valid cause-effect relationship in seismology was published in the Lawson
Report about the devastating earthquake in San Francisco in 1906. Earthquakes are caused when two
flanks of a geologic fault slip passed one another.

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