[Strategerist]

Most "events" - even acts of God - come, to one degree or another, politically predetermined: Almost exactly a year before the tsunamis, there were two earthquakes - one measuring 6.5 in California, one of 6.3 in Iran. The Californian quake killed two people and did little physical damage. The Iranian one killed 40,000 and reduced an entire city to rubble - not just the glories of ancient Persia, but all the schools and hospitals from the Seventies and Eighties.

USGS lists the Bam quake at 6.6 and the California one at 6.5; I've been seeing 6.3 for the Bam quake more and more, not sure what the origin of that is.

The primary reason the Bam quake did so much damage was it was DIRECTLY under a medium-sized city, and the California one wasn't. I've noticed a bit of a gloatfest from people under the illusion that it's entirely American construction techniques that was the difference in deaths and damage.

Have a Bam-sized quake DIRECTLY under a city like Salt Lake City or some Midwestern city with limited seismic upgrades and you're going to have 5,000+ killed; you won't reach 40,000 killed, but it will be very, very bad.

[Diva Betsy Ross]

Northridge quake (LA 1994) was magnitude 6.7. Resulted in 51 deaths. In my book the valley counts as high population density.

No reason to gloat, but your own post requires the "Midwestern city to have limited seismic upgrades" - is not the whole point of "superior american construction techniques" include preparing for seismic activity in active seismic zones?

No desire to start a thread on seismic analytics - but I think the original comment was much more intended as "stuff happens, and when your number comes up it comes up".

Again - no reason to gloat, but no reason to build a straw man either.

Diva's Husband

[daviddennis]

The Northridge quake was directly under a HUGE-sized city - the Valley has a population of over 1 million, and the Northridge earthquake had impacts as far as Hollywood and Santa Monica.

I think it says a lot for our building codes that it killed only 51 people. Not that this is not a tragedy, but it's not an enormous scale tragedy like the Iran quake, which in fact was a bit smaller than Northridge.

Steyn is right.

When I bought my house, Property JD, this firm you pay $100 to for various reports that confirm mostly what you already knew, told me that my property was not in a Tsunami Inundation Zone. At the time I laughed and wished it WAS, because then it would be in Malibu on the beach.

I don't think Malibu construction techniques would stand up to what the Asians faced, though, and Steyn conceded that point later in the article. In the paragraph we're talking about, he points out that most of the time, not all, natural disasters can be mitigated by better planning.

Just not this particular time.

D