Following Florence, lessons from Harvey in recovery and resilience
Something Unexpected And Weird Is Happening Beneath California’s Deadliest Faults
A section of the San Andreas Fault on the Carrizo Plain in California. (Image: Doc Searls/Flickr)
The detection of strange, unpredicted behaviour deep below the surface near the San Andreas and San Jacinto faults suggests scientists have an incomplete understanding of the processes responsible for earthquakes in the region.
Over the past four decades, geoscientists have recorded thousands of small earthquakes in California’s San Bernardino basin near the San Andreas and San Jacinto faults.
New research published in Geophysical Research Letters suggests many of these quakes, some of which occur at depths between 10 and 20km, are exhibiting surprising deformation patterns. Instead of slipping in a horizontal manner, many of these earthquakes show vertical movement far below the surface….
Following Florence, lessons from Harvey in recovery and resilience
With the impacts of Hurricane Florence continuing to unfold, coastal communities in the Southeast will soon be looking to other coastal areas, like Houston, as models for rebuilding resiliently. By doing so, they can speed their recovery and build back in smart ways – because that’s what resilience is all about.
For Houston, it wasn’t a single event that triggered discussions of resilience. Houston residents have faced a decade of intense storms and floods, with Hurricane Ike in 2008, the Memorial Day Flood of 2015, the Tax Day Flood of 2016 and Hurricane Harvey in 2017. Together, these repeat catastrophic events sounded the alarm that past approaches to managing flood waters are not sufficient.
Last week, I went to Houston to help decision-makers explore how the city can realize its aim to become more resilient. One year after Harvey, Houston is still learning from its experiences and building upon lessons learned from mega-disasters like Katrina and Sandy to move more rapidly into resilience-building phases…
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