report on the largest earthquake recorded in north america that happened on march 27, 1964 in alaska. it measured 9.2 on the richter scale, killed over 130 people and affected the southern half of the state. [inaudible conversations] good evening. i'm bradley graham, co-owner of politics and prose love with my wife, and on behalf of the entire staff, welcome. thank you very much for coming. so if you're like me, you pick up henry's new book, "the great quake" and you immediately assume it's about some

californian disaster. you don't think about alaska unless perhaps you're an earthquake specialist or some trivia master. but alaska is exactly where the great quake happened on march 27, 1964, at 9.2 on the richter scale. it was the biggest earthquake ever recorded in north america and the second most powerful in world history. does anyone know the most powerful? [inaudible] >> the answer is chile in 1960, and that when registered 9.5. the white and alaska lasted more than four minutes which is an incredibly long time for an earthquake. the human tragedy and physical damage of it all are dramatically and vividly captured by henry in his book, but the impact on people, on

structures and on the landscape is only part of the story that henry tales. his book also is a story about how a major natural disaster ended up spurring scientific inquiries. and that part of the story centers around one individual in particular, a geologist with u.s. geological survey named george plastered. he wasn't an earthquake expert by new alaska and arrived the day after the earthquake to investigate what happened. the study he produced to explain what caused the rupture help confirm what is now the widely accepted idea of plate tectonics but what at the time was a controversial and much debated notion, and i'm not even going to begin to get into plate tectonics because you have a lot more about it from henry any minute. this is henry's first book buddies particularly skilled at

combining the human interest story with a history of scientific advancement. he's a veteran journalist who, after extensive papers in paris, new, and bridgeport connecticut joined the "new york times" where he's been for two decades as a reporter or editor writing about science for much of that time. for a decade from 1995-2009 he wrote observatory, the weekly column in the science times section. he was an editor on the national desk, national news desk and the sunday review and was one of the first editors of circuits, the times pioneering technology section. these days and report on climate change and the "new york times" has a whole group assigned to cover just this critical issue. a review in the los angeles times called "the great quake"

quote and extending work of nonfiction, one that weaves together snapshots of a lost world, the primal power of nature and high sites. so ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming henry fountain. [applause] >> thank you so much for having me. i really appreciate it. first of all i just want ask, anybody here in alaska in 1964 experience a quake? anybody likes know, okay. i'm not surprised because people on the east coast speeded we were alive but have short-term memories. [laughing] >> very good. people in east coast generally don't know much about this quite. i have to do one thing. i have to set a timer for reasons that will become apparent. it's actually because my car, the meter is running outside. [laughing] okay, so the timer is going. i thought i should talk a little bit about how this book came

about. so as he said i was, i've been assigned to it for a long time and i wrote the story in 2014 about the 50th anniversary of this earthquake. and it was really about the 50th anniversary because at the "new york times" can we really don't right anniversary stories. so instead -- >> lift the microphone up a a little. >> sure. and also feel free to come anytime you got a question feel free to just go ahead and ask of him. hopefully will time afterwards as well. but so, so as was noted, this earthquake happened on march 27, 1964. 1964. so in march 2014 i started getting e-mails from u.s. geological survey, which by the way is my favorite federal

agency. the e-mails were basically telling me and lots of other people about the 50th anniversary of this earthquake and all the work that was done by, especially by a geological survey geologist by the name of george plafker back in the day. as i said the "new york times" are pretty cool, we don't like to do anniversary stories so i kind of put at the side of the i heard about the quake. i was definitely interested in it. so the anniversary came and went, didn't do a story. lo and behold on april 1, 4 days later, there was a really big earthquake in chile, 8.2. fortunately it was very little loss of life, i think six people died but there were a couple of tsunamis, a salami warning in hawaii. it made the news, so went to editors and said, you know, -- tsunami warning. normally we wouldn't write about an earthquake in chile that killed eight people but i could write a story about this

earthquake and also relate it back to the alaska quake because when the chilean quake happened everybody, scientists and the news media immediately referred to as a mega-thrus mega- thrust, the kind of quake where you have one piece of crust sliding under another and then something breaks, friction builds up and have a huge earthquake. nowadays everybody knows our most people know what a mega-crust earthquake is in the happen all the time. the 2011 earthquake in japan was in mega crust earthquake. the one that led to all the tsunami deaths in 2004 in the indian ocean was a mega crust earthquake in this day .2 earthquake earthquake in chile was a mega crust earthquake. but in 19 safety for nobody had any quote as to what these kind of earthquakes were it was because of the 64 quake in the work of george plafker that signed figured it out. george really is responsible for

figuring it out. i said i can write a story that basically says that and it's a a sneaky way to do an anniversary story. they basically, i think my editors thought it was a good idea. also they had a hole to fill in the scientists action the next weeks of a single head. i did the story and then it ran and a couple days after that i got an e-mail out of the blue from an editor by the name of roger. i get e-mails from editors are whatever and usually their ideas are kind of dumb or silly or whatever. in this case roger said i read your article, i thought it was interesting and i thought it make for an interesting book because you have both the narrative of the earthquake, the story of the earthquake and incredible things that happened and the story of the site and particularly the scientists, plafker, who did all this work and babies a character you could flush out, maybe their

characters in his quake you could flush out and i thought it's actually not a bad idea. in fact, i talked to george plafker who still alive on the phone for the story and you seem like kind of a character. then in the next paragraph of the e-mail, roger said and we publish erik larson and books. this sounds like an eric larson book to me. so i perked up right away because if you're familiar with eric larson you know he's like probably one of the most popular nonfiction writers around, and so sells a lot of books. let me just say one thing and then i will wrap up this part of the dog in the we go on and talk about the other stuff. that present that just went off, that was four and a half minutes pixel that's the amount of time that the ground shook during the alaskan earthquake. so think about that. by comparison, the 1906

earthquake of san francisco sheriff about one minute. the earthquake that damaged the bay bridge shook for i think 30 seconds at most. so you can get a sense of the power of the quake. let me just wrap up. so you mention eric larson and i thought that would be cool, kind of like eric larson book. obviously i'm not eric larson and nobody is eric larson. eric larson is unbelievably talented and is written amazing books but the book roger thought this might be most like was one called isaacs storm which it is eric meyer with is about a hurricane in texas in 1900 that killed 8000 people. there was a meteorologist at the time who played a big role in it.

i feared there's no way am going to write an eric larson book and even when you're successful as him but on the other hand, by mentioning it, it became instantly clear to me what kind of book roger was talking about. it is nonfiction we weep and elephants of the story, both the actual disaster and the site. that's what i tried to do. so i wanted to talk about two things. one is the quake itself, and the other is science. this is anchorage the day after the quake, and that's downtown and you will notice it's almost like there's an elevator there. that's because that part of the street dropped about ten feet. one of the reasons i wanted to write this book is because i didn't know much about anybody i talk to, after i wrote that story, even my science colleagues, i would say there

was an earthquake. there with you when you working on? i'm working on this story about this earthquake that happen and they would ask you, like, well, where was it? i with the alaska. and then they would say when was it? i would say 196464. and they would go -- that was usually the conversation killer because what can you talk about? nobody knew much about it but, in fact, once you start to get into it was really an amazing event and people saw stuff that they've never seen before. people experienced really terrible, terrible things and it was pretty something. so part of, for me writing the book wishes learning about this earthquake and talking to people who had lived through it. and also reading first-hand accounts of it. i don't know if there's any other authors who write i guess you could call this history, but

i found talking to survivors because it was so long ago, 50 years ago, that actually number one, the memories are not as strong obviously after five decades, but number two, particularly in a place like alaska, where communities are really big thing, they are kind of isolate, so particularly in times of like valdez and stuff, communities are really big, peoples memories, people tell the stories. they tend to share the stories. everybody's story gets homogenize so a lot of the stories sound the same. for me it was actually in some ways although i did talk to a lot of survivors, it was more useful to read a first-hand accounts of people written during the time, or shortly after the quake. there was one person particular in anchorage who compiled a lot of these, so her archives are really, really helpful.

but so is this it people saw stuff they've never seen before, things happen that just unbelievable things like top of the mountains shattering off and causing huge landslides and huge lake center, several feet of ice just breaking up into hundreds and hundreds of pieces or forming pressure ridges or whatever. cars bouncing around like bumper cars. buildings wriggling like caterpillars. the ground wriggled like a pebble had been thrown into it and it was rippling in the water. so it was really amazing. anchorage had a particular problem in the a lot of it is built, the soul underneath the soul is a layer of clay called bootlegger called clay. during this earthquake it liquefied essential. it became almost like agrees and

so part of anchorage slid and subsided and collapsed. what happened here is the land all sort of shifted that way. there is a hill to the left and it shifted down a hill. there is also a part of town called the heights and thought i would read a little -- is this my copy? a little section of what happened in the heights. so if you ever been to anchorage, out by the airport, out by the international airport, there still a neighborhood out there but in the late 50s, early 60s, they built a pretty nice david called turner can heights. it was the nicest neighbors in town, my subdivision. a lot of the talents of movers and shakers lived there including a guy by the name of robert atwood ran the local paper. he's actually much more than that. he was very involved in the

state could push in 1959 and knew everybody. he was also learning how to play the trumpet. he was really bad at it and so he would only play the trumpet, old practice when nobody was at his house. so at 5:00 on march 27, his wife went to go shopping because having people over for dinner that night and he used that as an excuse to break out the trumpet and start to practice. and here's what happened. no sooner had he put the incident to his lips though when the house started rocking. a chandelier hanging from a beam of the living room began to sway. soon the whole house was searching about physical being heaved to and fro. it was obvious to atwood the house would not stay in one place for long. the large roof in particular seemed in danger of caving in given out every other part of the structure was bending at odd angles. he ran out the door and down the driveway. when you stopped and looked

back, the ground under the house was moving stretching the structural part of one moment after impressing at the next as if it were a giant squeezebox but that didn't last long as the forces of the earth soon became too much for the house. it broke apart to a terrible noise with glass cracking, huge log splitting in the contents been crushed and crumpled. getting out when he had it saved his life. but he didn't have much time to think about that for the loss of his worldly possessions. around increaser falling over. worse, the ground was starting to break into strange angular blocks, some rotating at and understand. it was as if swarms of organisms were inside the soil giving at life. i would begin to wonder if you would be able to stand anywhere. suddenly a crevice open beneath his feet and he was falling. it seemed as if he felt a long distance and although it was still light out, suddenly he was in darkness. but he landed in sand miraculously soft and dry.

he saw he was in a deep chasm and are starting to fill up with other objects, tree stumps, fenceposts and boulder sized chunks of frozen soil. his right arm seemed to be buried in the sand and to realize his right hand was still holding the trumpet. whole trees are now falling into the crevice, which is getting wider and growing towards his neighbors house. atwood could see their house to the chasm. it appeared to be sliding toward him. after a while he wasn't sure how long the house stopped moving. in fact, atwood realize everything had stopped moving or lease was only moving slightly. it was quiet except for the occasion crash of damage structures and trees. he let go of the trumpet, wiggled his arm free and slowly climbed out of the crevice. that stuff doesn't happen every day. he managed, found the neighbors

kids and found some of the people and they all managed to crawl out of the area until he got to what was essentially a newly formed bluff where there were some rescuers with ropes and ladders so they're all saved but it was really, just one indication of the strange things that happened. the book has a lot more, particularly i wanted to focus a lot -- inc. which was the most populous part of the state, and what happens in earthquakes as george plafker and others will tell you with studies in for a long time is the most populous place tends to be identified with the earthquake because after all the people are. in fact, you can carry that further. a lot of us? happen, really powerful earthquakes happen where nobody lives and nobody knows about them. scientists know about them but they don't get reported in the media. in this case everybody thought

it was an anchorage earthquake and with a lot of dems but are only five or six localities. there are two committees in particular really suffered and those of the two i really wanted to focus on. one was valdez which we all know now is where the alaska oil pipeline spill was. the other is a little native village on an island in prince william sound. it was hit by a tsunami, by a tidal wave, and one-third of the people in the village died. so i go into that a lot and those really interesting. i met through a lot of detective work, she nika had a one-room schoolhouse at the top of the hill and they hired teachers are out-of-state every year, the bureau of indian affairs hired teachers are out-of-state to teach, and that you're there was a teacher from long beach california who was teaching

their and i managed after like a month of detective work to figure out who she was in finder and track her down. partly through the use of facebook of all things. and not in facebook but a danish guy on facebook in denmark. so i talked to people, and chris van weikel is the name of the schoolteacher. she was actual, sakamoto people's memories of quake can get homogenous. she i tried not shared her memories with that many people other than her family and occasionally she would do the schoolteacher, she would talk it at school. so her memories are really pretty fresh still after 50 years plus she took some photos which nobody had ever seen before. that was really great.

but a lot of people who didn't want to talk about, even 50 years later didn't want to talk about the earthquake. so i try to respect their feelings. you can kind of understand. i mentioned before by people on the east coast of nobody answered of this earthquake before. people in alaska either they were in it, their parents were in, their grandparents were in a, primus everybody remembers it. it was a huge event is that it happened somewhere else with large population, we would all still talking about it today. so that's the quake itself and i was a big part of it for me was just loaded more about the quake and realizing how amazing it was. was. yet they want to talk about is the science, which in addition to love people don't know about the quake comes when i took the earthquake if mentioning i was working on a book about a earthquake that happen 50 years ago in alaska didn't stop the conversation, then we get to talking about what's interesting about it and i would say the

most interesting actually is that at the time of that quake nobody really knew whether still a big debate about what earthquakes like this happened, whether, in fact, what we all, to told except, this idea the globe is made of a bunch of different places, the surface of the globe is divided up into about 12 or so large plates and the move around in relation to each other, what we call plate tectonics. in 1964 it was the subject of really, really great debate. it wasn't like i congratulate the climate change debate today where you have on one side you have thousands and thousands of scientists and the other side you almost no scientists. you have of the that you have almost no scientist in 1964, the '60s, there was a big debate about the structure of the earth

and generally prominent scientists on both sides. you and people who thought this idea that the continent summer moved around, this idea those first developed in the 19 teens, continental drift, there were people very prominent people who thought that was poppycock essentially and there is no way that they confidence could move like that. they were called the stableness. they had a lot of alternative explanations. by 1964 there was his idea that through a lot of work of people like harry hess and fred vine, people like that, they discovered there's no -- what we call seafloor spreading were big magma oozes out of bridges in the middle of the ocean, spreads apart and moves very slowly like on the order of two inches a year out in both directions. the issue is what happens to the

courtthe? that was been much except to the issue became what happens to stop when it reaches the margin and reaches the continents? the stableness thought made one expedition is the entire globe is getting slightly bigger and that would be really hard to measure because if the car so ie pretty hard to measure. the size of the earth to that degree of certainty. but the other side which was getting more and more force, the argument was getting much more credence were the mobile lists who thought this cross is great in the middle, it is out, spreads up, seafloor spreads can when it gets to the content margins it goes underneath, re-melts essentially and eventually find its way back to the ridge. it's almost like what they call a conveyor belt. in fact, that's how they refer

to it. because it's going out and pushing against the continents, would force the continents to move. it would also do things like create mountains and stuff as materials scraped off the seafloor and hit the continents that debate was really, really big in the mid-'60s. along comes this earthquake and george plafker was a 35 year old u.s. geological survey geologist working, he is with the alaska branch. he was not a seismologist by any means. he was like a rock hound. he was go out in the alaskan bush every summer and spend a week or two with one other geologist in the middle of nowhere and read rocks and the i do is figure what kind of mineral resources alaska had. so when the quake happened, the

geological survey decided they needed to figure out what happened with this quake. they didn't really have any seismologist on staff. what they did have was george and a couple of other geologist who are comfortable in getting around alaska. they were not afraid of bears. they could live for a week or two out in the bush country with no contact with anybody and survive. they sing george and a couple of the people alaska to do the work. and for george in particular that totally changed his life. he any of the spend a couple of weeks doing an initial survey. they wrote a report and he went back the next summer and spend the entire summer living on a barge in prince william sound and surveying the land changes. one of the big things that happen in this quake is an area

the size of california some of the land rose up and some of it went down so we measured at all over the course of the summer. and then went back and just in sort of, just one of these things like what makes science so incredible is here's a guy who went to brooklyn college. he had a bs in geology, but he saw this change firsthand, saw all these changes and he also spent time at south america and he had seen things that led him to told except the idea that they continents moved around and stuff. this crust must be sliding, under continental crust. he looked at it all and put two and two and two and two and two together and figured it out and wrote a paper in 1965 that basically way that what mega-thrust earthquakes are. he he was up against a lot of people, a lot of prominent people including one in

particular who wrote a paper that appeared a couple months before his death argued totally opposite way that it had to have been much different than a a situation that was not related to any kind of sliding at one crust under another. george turned out to be right. so the great thing about this book for me in addition to meeting survivors of the quake and spend some time in alaska was to get to spend time with george, because he is at age 87 now, i think he's 88 now, he is still going strong. he lives in northern california. he retired from the geological survey 22 years ago but he still goes to the surveyors office every day. he's still working on the alaska earthquake. one of the great joys of my life as a get to spend some time with him in alaska, including being his field assistant for a day as

we were slogging around the copper river delta because he's been studying, he is taken course of the copper river delta which is in the earthquake zone, try to figure out how often these earthquakes happen, these big, big alaskan earthquakes. he's basically figured out they happen every 500 years or so. so alaska is safe for now. but he's an amazing guy. he's a very intuitive person. he long since got his phd in everything and knows a lot of seismology but at the time he is just a guy rock camera at a compass and he really figured it out. it's a testament of two things i think. one, and delete this entry was in, too, there's, it so important to see things firsthand. i happen to work for a news organization that stipulates in spending money to send people to places and see things.

i was just in iceland and alaska working on climate change type stories. there's no substitute for seeing the stuff firsthand. george, the same thing. he saw all this, the guy with the of the paper never saw it. he was working in his lab. so that's one thing. and i'm not forgetting what the second thing is. [laughing] >> but i'm sure it was vastly important. but the other thing is, it just seemed important to me in writing this book to celebrate scientists and science. because we live in a society now particularly in the united states where science is often not valued. scientists are not valued. there's a strong anti-science sentiment among some members of government, some politicians, even some schools.

it's important to celebrate science, not just the famous ones, fostoria, einstein but people like george who just do the work and figure things out. george is finally getting some recognition for what he did. there's been a group of scientists for years have been trying to get him some kind of recognition for his role in acceptance place of tectonics of filing his getting a gold medal from both the geological society of america every seismological society of america which is really great. if there some way that this book can continue celebrating his life and career, that makes him very happy. so with that, if you questions want to ask about anything? sure. [applause] >> so i would say this.

when you questions asked, come up and talk into the microphone up here for purposes of the video. >> thank you. thanks for a really great story, and also thanks for the great story and, because of your kind words, not only about signed but about the u.s. geological survey, i'm going to identify myself as a u.s. -- not a geologist. i hasten to add that i would like to know more about any further detail you have about

george's career with the usgs and how it changed can with respect to his stature in work. you've already said he became not a seismologist for somebody who worked on the earthquake in particular and then presumably, and on plate tectonics. anything further? >> yes. >> i don't go back quite as far as george. >> so he went, actually it's very interesting. the most powerful earthquake to occur in record time, and somebody mention krakatoa, that was before the age of seismographs and stuff so it's kind of the picture. but the biggest one, the only one that's bigger than the alaskan quake was in 1960 chilean quake, which was 9.5.

so when george came out with this paper in 1965 and laid up this basic idea that megathrust earthquakes happen and in doing so essentially what i like to say is the only way you can understand this earthquake is if you accept the idea of plate tectonics. very prominent guy at caltech by the of clarence allen, the head of the laboratory said okay, you think you have figured out. why don't you go to checkout the 1960 quake and see what you see. he did. did. he got a grant and he went to shelley and he did more or less the same thing. he hired a fishing boat. he spent time working for a company in the south america and did same kind of serving work and found a essentially the same thing, that there was this incredible deformation and the only way, the only fault you get up in the click was this slow sliding shallow quake, shallow fault. he studied that one and actually that paper which i think was in 1967 can bring both earthquakes with even some ways even more

influential. so we had an interesting career because he still was a member of the alaska branch so still did a lot of work in alaska, a lot of basic geology work here but because of his expertise, particularly in the fall and winter and spring when you could really work in alaska, normal he would be back in menlo park, he would go work on earthquakes turkey did a lot of work even after he retired. he went and studied the earthquake in 2004, the one that caused all the tsunamis turkey studied, and was in an earthquake he went on to study this earthquake in peru in 19 today and i think in the, he actually was so taken by another thing that happened during earthquake he ended up studying that. there was a landslide with the top 8000 feet of you really high peak in the andes broke off,

formed this 30 million cubic yard debris slide and went down the mountain. it reached speeds estimated 600 miles an hour. and it also, it went into about and it kind of came up the other side of the valley which was short and it became airborne. select 30 million cubic yards of material traveling 600 miles an an hour in the air. it landed on an unfortunate city of 25,000 people and buried all except a couple hundred of them. so he studied at picky figured out exactly what happened pics of things like that. he had a really, really interesting career and he still, as i said he still going strong. he's been working on a paper now about the frequency of these megathrust earthquakes in that part of alaska and hopefully will come at some point. >> did he finish his phd and what he did do that?

>> stanford while he was working for the survey. and it was a think actually the chile quake paper might've been his phd thesis, so it was in the late 60s. >> thanks. >> sure. >> i am so short. i'm not sure this is going to work. >> do an elvis thing. there you go. >> is this good wax when i was at earthquake park in anchorage, i was absolutely astonished by the degree to which they had put effort into explaining both the scientific and the individual in fact, of the earthquake. what i was equally astonished by with a little loss of life there was, thank goodness, because alaska was so sparsely populated. >> right. >> but let me ask you, how beneficial was earthquake park and the fabulous work affiliated

with it to the publication of your book? >> well, i visited earthquake park a couple of times, but i got actually most of my education about geology and earthquakes from george directly. it was one of the greatest joys of my career was spending time with him and alaska. through the good graces of the geological survey of their and a current geologist by the name of peter, we spent a couple of days on prince william sound. we visited the places where he had measured. we stood on this beach on montague island that had been a beach on march 27, 1964, at 5:00. by 5:40 p.m. it was 35 feet in feet in the air. there were trees growing on it, moss on the kabul. i got most of my education from george and talking with other people, peter was very helpful. the park was a great place

because that's where the story i read about bob atwood, that's his neighborhood. so that's the remnants of all these, i mention that kerry was under laid by this layer of bootlegger cove clay that basically turned to greece and all that land that sat above it slid about 1000 feet or more towards the water, and broke up into all these pieces. so it earthquake park which is he is remnants of that. even 5 50 years later it is obvious the land was tortured basically. it's a really good place. if you're ever in anchorage, it's right by, it had a couple of hours between flights in anything it is literally right off the runway. >> thank you. >> sure. >> my name is eric. i grew up in alaska and i left in may of 63 so i missed it but sortesorting with a number of qs while i was living up there.

i did see the aftermath right after the quake and that's another story. i have a photograph i want to show you, and aerial photograph of anchorage immediately after the quake and you can see the debris going out in the bay. >> it was all broken up because it was snow-covered. the fishers a very dark and the snow is white and it looks like, i don't know how to describe it. >> what always tested me, obviously they always talk about eight or nine people actually only died in anchorage proper here most of the deaths were in the villages along the coast of kodiak, exact right? >> and i get into the in the book. most of the deaths, everything earthquake, the building will phone you and you will die. certainly that happens when the alaska quake, 90% of the deaths were due to water and tsunamis. in some cases tsunamis hit while the ground was still shaking. you can imagine that. so the other thing is and give point out there were not that many people in the entire state.

a lot of people talk about the pacific northwest now and have its conditions are somewhat the same. it has a subducted plate that is getting charged up and someday it will pop as the geologist like to say. there's 10 million people in that part of the pacific northwest. that would be a major, major major disaster. >> are teachers i said run outside, all hold hands. [laughing] >> that's not the official idea now is this idea getting under doorways no longer really thought of as a good idea. pretty much any part of the house is asked on as a way the state. the idea is to get under something. don't run outside. these earthquakes, earthquakes in italy fettered not even a powerful but all these old masonry buildings at 11 much

reinforcement, bricks fall, people run outside and there's an aftershock and the façade falls over and, unfortunately, people die. the idea is get down, get under something and stay there. like it under a table. >> one of the tv stations, i think all the tv stations at the time, their tower was on top of something like apartment and it was a 14 or 15 story and then towers on top. when we would have quakes and i was very, yo you'd go outside ad you could see the tower waiting back and forth. >> a good point. alaska doesn't have, major earthquakes of happen as often but each responsible for like 16% of the earthquakes in the world, and alaska. >> thank you very much. appreciate it. >> sure. >> i was lucky enough to hear your interview on npr, a great interview. one of the things i was curious about you mentioned there that

in 40 or 50 years they think the pacific northwest i think one of earthquake or something like that. you mentioned it, plafker said every 500 just to the department of plate tectonics has been helpful but how much that have gotten able to forecast when earthquakes are going to happen? it's a pretty big forecast role. >> you are talking to different areas, alaska and the pacific northwest. those are two different plates. different situations. it's a good question. a lot of people ask like why can we even predict earthquakes? i think, people been trying to do it forever. i think it's never going to happen. what they can do is they can forecast probabilities. it's based on knowing how frequent the earthquakes are. so for instance, in the pacific northwest apart of this is because of the work of george plafker has done over the years with the no call page you -- passed quickly get things like

sediments and now the land is uplifting and soft drink wakes. in the pacific northwest they discovered through various techniques that the last really big earthquake on that plate boundary, was in 1700. in fact, i know the day, and which one night or something. there was a big tsunami in japan the couple of people and is recorded in japan. they've gone back and he found the return for earthquakes, how often these big earthquakes occur in that location are 400-600 years, say. we are now 370 years after the last one. that's why they forecast, and i don't know exactly what the possibilities are. different site is located to the ones but they say there is ex-probabilities that will be a major quake on that fault within

x time, like maybe one in five chance within 100 years that clay, whatever. that fault. that's what they do. but nobody can say there's going to be an earthquake, a 9.5 earthquake january 15, 28 or something. people just cannot do that. they also have, the reasons they do this a forecasting is two other people to the ideas they live in a risky area, a hazardous area. the people in the pacific northwest, a very hazardous area and i think people are getting the message. people are building like tsunami shelters. people know what to do in the event of an earthquake or maybe a big risk is from water and not so much from buildings because buildings are built these days with pretty tough standards. so that the idea behind forecast. it's not to alarm people

answering that to predict but just to make people aware if there's problems, potential problems. >> thank you. >> sure. >> could you tell us just very briefly about the measurements of earthquakes? >> sure. so at the time of the 64 earthquake they use something called the richter scale which was developed by charles richter who was a very famous seismologist at caltech. basically measured the waves more or less and it was not very good at measuring big earthquakes. it's never been good at it. in fact, in this quake the closest seismograph actually broke during the quake. it was overwhelmed by the power of this earthquake. so in the ensuing 50 years they worked at a better way to measure quakes and is called the moment magnitude scale. what that does is it uses all

the information that seismograph pick all the waves and everything but it basically computes the power based on the length of the fault and how much it moves and figure how much energy is released. so the 9.5 quake in chile, when this quakes in the 60 quake happened they were not sure what the magnitude was because seismograph couldn't read. the richter scale couldn't deal with it. they have since come back and calculated and that's why this is alaska quake was 9.2. some people think it might be 9.3, and others, the chilean quake was 9.5. space on in chile the fall was a ton of miles long. it actually broke -- the fault. i forget the actual amount of slip, the actual displacement but it was in the order of tens of feet. they can figure out the amount of energy and, therefore, the magnitude. they did the same with alaska and debbie quake now that's how

they do it, particularly the big ones. that's how it's done. >> you focus here tonight on natural causes of earthquakes. are you or is anyone looking at human causes of earthquakes? and think you things like fracking for natural gas and some jurisdictions have even banned that now. or gigantic dams with very heavy reservoirs seem to -- is this a big problem or is anyone really looking at it? >> i done a bunch of stories about what they call induced seismicity which is these days it's largely due to oil and gas operations. in most cases is not the actual fracking process per se. it's not, fracking is they inject fluid with sand of the chemicals down into a well to break the shale open to get the gas or oil out. and so it's like you are

basically exploding the rock and the causes very, very, very minor quakes. but what happens in a fracking lower any welcome particularly in the oil and gas will is for every like an old oil well, every barrel of oil you get he might get like 50 barrels of water out of the well. this water is underground. it's picked up radiation from rocks and so it's slightly radioactive secant like dump it in a lake today or dump it in the ocean. they pulled the back underground in storage wells. almost all of the earthquakes, these induced earthquakes had been happening in oklahoma, i think there were some in youngstown, ohio, summit arkansas and texas, place like that. almost all of those are related to pumping of wastewater down, not fracking per se. there's been realization that the way you stop these is by stopping pumping so much water down and find another place to put it.

that seems to work. even in oklahoma which is big oil and gas state they started to realize that. your reference to dance is interesting. the same kind of idea. you impound a lot of water, water weighs a lot and it upsets the equilibrium below ground. there's fault everywhere, not big ones in alaska but there are faults. he put a lot of weight in the place and it will change the equilibrium down there and you might have an earthquake. similarly, mining can do the same thing because you're moving materials, all of a sudden you less rock, less weight and you can have earthquakes. people are aware of it. there was one, 8.0 earthquake in kazakhstan in an oil and gas field like 25 years ago. that's by far the biggest one that's ever happened. most of these induced earthquakes are much smaller, most of them can't even be felt with the biggest one in the

states i think was in oklahoma in a town called craig and it was 5.6. it damaged a couple of houses in one or two people were injured by falling stuff. but so most of these quakes are small. yes? [inaudible] >> does this have any connecti connection? what does it tell you, if anything, about climate change? >> the question was, what do, have learned about christ, have any connection to climate change. it's a good question. i don't think there's much connection really. one of the things i like about much of his life due to study lots of different things. my employer is nice enough to let me, well, i took six months off without pay, they were nice enough not to pay me for six months. [laughing] but they let me, obviously i

write mostly about climate change but when an earthquake happens i will write about that. it's, i'm sorted into disaster. when volcanoes occur, i went to isolate a couple of years ago when does the big erection going on. but there's really no, not that i can think of, sort of direct connection between china change and what i know about earthquakes. [applause] >> i think we had one of the question back there if you want. >> i want to ask how many plates there are? >> how many plates there are. i'm sure i will get this wrong, but i believe there are about a dozen to if there are any geophysicist in the audience, correct me. there are a dozen major ones like the pacific plate which is almost all the pacific ocean, the north american plate, south american plate, a bunch of them like that. one of the things geophysicists have learned in the last 50

years or the last 40 years since plate tectonics has become an accepted is there's lots of smaller plates and it's a very complicated picture. and, in fact, plates tend to break up and there are faults between, such as the san andreas fault whichever knows about is actually with the golf at transform fault as to sections of the plate move in relation to each other. the short answer is there's about a dozen big ones and a bunch of small ones. all right? [applause] thanks for coming. >> copies of the book are available at the checkout desk. he will be up your sign. please form a line to the right of the table and our staff would appreciate it if you would fold up the chairs you're sitting in. also, that's george plafker by the way. [inaudible conversations]

here's a look at some of the current best-selling nonfiction books according to the green light bookstore in brooklyn.

>> some of these authors have or will be appearing on booktv. you can watch them on our website, booktv.org. >> one, invest in front is the pyramid scheme which involves promises of profitability and then initially delivering on those promises by taking the money that later investors put in and using that to pay off the

dividends to early investors. of course this can't last forever because eventually you run out of people at the bottom of the pyramid. the actual form of that is very consistent, but so is the mode of marketing. in almost all of these types of schemes the approach is to look for some group of insiders and to someone in that group, almost all of the schemes are perpetrated by individuals who can expect to have trust because they are selling this scheme to people like them who are distinct from the rest of society. so the most famous example of this probably still, bernie thei scheme, charles ponzi operate this in boston in the early 1920s, and he focus on the intel community which is what he came from. the earliest example i know is a scheme by a woman actually in

the 1870s in boston, she focus on unmarried women. bond of trust. i am unmarried, your unmarried and our quakers have given the resources that have enabled me to make good on the promises of wild investment returns. once it starts going the chief marketers of the scheme, it's the advertising, it's word-of-mouth and that is a pattern that has recovered right up to our time. ..