2017 not so long ago we were celebrating or commemorating the first university of hurricane sandy. obviously affected a large part of the eastern seaboard. i was reporting on super storm

sandy as it struck. in that book i was looking at how it was that we have gotten super storm sandy so long how it was that new york had failed to issued evacuation orders and how it was that 70 buildings and key pieces of infrastructure were flooded. during that storm. in the meteorologist there who were incredibly talented cap time in the same thing over and over again. we are just not very good at forecasting in predicting it. for the kind of havoc that is erect by these storms. we saw that in 2017 with hurricane maria. in thinking about the infrastructure and predictions

and how it is that we respond to natural disaster it occurred to me that for all that is powerful about a hurricane they are no -- no where near nowhere near our most powerful phenomenon. earthquakes are stronger and so i started to think how do we prepare for those sorts of natural disasters. as a nature -- and nation. when you think about that. we have the air national guard and is capable of flying these into the storm. it will drop the little technology pieces.

with all of the technology we can try to predict the track of a hurricane. and yet we still see the profound devastation. hurricanes are a no-brainer compared earthquakes. we know less about the inner workings of the planet than we do in for every seismologist that i met. they all have some kind of analogy. we know more about x than we do about earthquakes. and when you think about it that is kind of where i think

the terror from earthquake was. with it geological society. most of them you have not heard about. they are happening every day. they are experiencing thousands of earthquakes. according to the usgs there are 2100 known faults in the united states. and when you think about the last 200 years in the united states every single earthquake that has occurred has occurred on a fault that we did not know about prior to the earthquake. we know about fault zones.

and we know that you can have earthquakes. but when it comes to the actual fault we usually don't know about it until it happens. it is because we have done more research there. when we talked to the u.s. geologist they say listen if you want to be really terrified think about earthquake potential in the northeast. we don't know anything about that. and basically that's because when you think about it earthquakes are happening 5 miles and 30 miles under the surface of the earth. we don't know when and where there can happen. we can't can anticipate them and get technology there to measure them. so all we can really do is kind of coast more them. they remain were made this incredibly unknown phenomenon that we have to guess at.

but what we do know is that the united states is profoundly seismically active and the potential for major earthquakes is happening just about everywhere. unless you live in miami you're you are probably at risk for an earthquake. what happened tomorrow or 500 years we don't know. we try to get a real sense of how much it happens. and how will we are prepared for the earthquake. and what we still need to do. to become not just sustainable but ultimately resilient communities. i embarked on a road trip.

the southern section will see a major earthquake in our lifetime. we know that that is entirely possible. for instance the pacific northwest is really prime for a major earthquake and would come with a resulting tsunami quite possibly that could do a lot of devastation. we also know places like salt lake city ready employees i knew i needed to get to places like that. someone is walking over to get about the work that they are doing and trying to understand what the threat is and why the threat is here. some of the things that really surprise me was the snowball ripple effect of what the seismic potential has. i had one section of the book i spent quite a bit of time in

memphis and some of you may be aware of this series of earthquakes. we've all sorts of really wonderful stories about this that it made at the mississippi river flow backwards that it made the liberty bell crack. they're not true. and we know the new magic fault zone. this is bad news obviously if you like barbecue and you like the ducks at the peabody hotel. it's also bad news not only for the country as a whole but for the international system. and something you may not be aware of. on any given day.

something like 40% of all of our trucking modifications have one single bridge. fedex has their world headquarters there and if you want a really exciting night spend the night on the tarmac there and watch the 300 airplanes come in from around the world they stack them up so that they all landed at the same time from sydney australia to savannah georgia. they all fly in. they offload something like two and half million packages. they sort them in the place called the matrix. they get sent out again. they have the third largest hub in memphis as well. they are processing about a million and a half we are a place like memphis we would have basically the standstill of commerce.

there is the obvious things that you think about. there is mortgages and paychecks there is the amazon order. two of the largest contractors of fedex. are the u.s. post office. we only have things like those packages in those books we have medicine and we have military equipment pretty much everything you can think of we have the trucking. so memphis going down and taking into account also things like the mississippi river are still a major can billions of trade like grain and petroleum and things like that one of the most fragile of the infrastructural system

memphis going down doesn't just affect memphis. affects all of us which is why when they designated the foremost catastrophic natural disasters it listed an earthquake in memphis. it is really interesting how this could be and what the real effects would be. when you think about infrastructure we really need to be asking the some big questions about that. the americans society of civil engineer gives them a report card in for a last nine years we had average somewhere between a d or a d- in this is because over a. of decades we had chosen to invest in things other than our natural infrastructure. i think about it in two different ways. it is our roads and our bridges. it's also the same metaphoric

infrastructure. some tsunami warning systems. we have this incredible deficit and we have this really outvoted systems. i was in the state of maine. we have almost hurricane force winds. 400,000 people in a state the state of 1.2 million people they lost power because they are dealing with the 19th century. we no longer had 19th century weather and we no longer had 19th century systems in place. you see that catastrophic result.

i think natural disasters really call attention to that. and we have underestimated the power of earthquakes hysterically the last major earthquake in the u.s. was in 1989. i was also the first truly televised earthquake. it was really catastrophic. the pin taking of the bridges systems and the devastating images that came out of it. i would like to believe that 1989 with not so long ago it was a really long time ago. the collective history and memory we consistently underestimate the risk that

they pose. and it doesn't take much. if you think about for instance new york city they had witnessed a moderate earthquake every hundred years. it was really fairly regular almost to the year. hundred years moderate quake. one could say and seismologists who studied at the return the return rate of earthquakes. the time and has happened. they would create more rubble.

it is the un- reinforced masons rate. they would put out. that's a sort of scenario that we have to think through. this is the way we are dealing to willing to deal with this risk. in the basically changing the face of it. and around the state of oklahoma .

we have relative scientific certainty. the overwhelming majority are caused as a result of waste water injection which happens because of fracking. water and chemical solvents into the earth to create these timely -- tiny little fractures. they withdraw gas. it exists there from where it was covered by the shower. all of the wastewater up. and the depending on where you live in the country it either sits in settling pools it is is reinjected into the

high-pressure wealth. and changes it changes the pressure underground. what we are seen seeing in a place like oklahoma it's a very small earthquake and now they're getting bigger and bigger. small earthquakes often create bigger earthquakes. they are dealing with that shallow earthquakes with bombs going off. she was a survivor. he fought in the korean war. and they both said listen those work situations where left terrified. i sat on the patio for three hours. we heard the multiple explosions. they do minimal damage. they knock a few plates off of here.

at the sound is just so startling. as the earthquake grow they start to see the larger threats. how many ways we can set off earthquakes. with the call. in addition to wastewater. we do it all the time. when the hoover dam was built in the reservoir that we now call lake mead fills in behind we set off 10,000 earthquakes just like dislike filling that reservoir.

and again the issue here is not that were doing that but also that it hasn't kept up. and so what's happening is we know that. and what do we do. what do we do with this. and the seismologists when i talk to first responders this is what they wanted me to kind of come and tell me now. not that there is a set of doomsday scenario that may or may not be tripped as a nation in communities as a household there's so much that we can do. part of what i do in the book is outline the degree to which we can anticipate this risk. we had tried really hard to

predict earthquakes. we have invested tens of millions of dollars in earthquake predictions we tried to track that. and see if they would tell us. we tried put devices down in the fault zones. mostly unsuccessful. it should not discourage us all that much. there's other things we can do. when the mexico play a card in august and september of 2017 mexico did a couple of things. it occurred on the anniversary of the earthquake that killed thousands of people. after the earthquake happened in mexico they instituted a national drill system where every year on the anniversary of the earthquake mexico

undertakes a major thrill. what everybody pretends like an earthquake is happening. without our prior. mexicans were practicing. they knew what to do. after the 1985 earthquake. the early morning after the quake happened evil have 20 and 30 and 45 seconds to prepare for the quake. and it does not sound like much time. and we practice. you can grab and go back or grab the infant daughter you can divert a plane that's about to land. and those sorts of things

really can be the difference between life and death. we know when it's coming and we know we can have a major quake. we don't know if it's gonna be in washington dc or start salt lake or new york city. comes to household they did not have a weeks worth of food. even that we should know that that's entirely likely scenario. having things like a go bag and having a plan and understanding what were neck and half in that scenario.

that's can be one of the first things that goes. i just punched their name into the phone and it comes up. i couldn't call most of the people who are really important to me. knowing how to communicate with them in the event that i don't have cell phone technology. knowing where we can meet or what we can do is really important. and this is when it comes into the idea of resilience. how can we be resilient society. one of the towns that i focus on in the book is a small town at the base of the olympic peninsula in washington state. it is a working town in a very sort of modest economically modest fishing community. they are right in the zone for ac nami.

and we know a major tsunami and one that looks like a whole lot of that tsunami that devastated so much of japan. that is an entirely real possibility. knowing that what they decided to do was to take action. the very modest town passed a major referendum for something like $8 million and they decide what they were get a do was build a tsunami sheltering station at the top of their new grade school they knew that they could keep all of the kids in their district safe. it is incredibly sophisticated sheltering system built about this building. they've got it down to 27 buckets. they can get all of the kids in this district and they know that they are to be safe. it's a likelihood that that's

can happen. in the next five or ten years. we're really good that we are responding. we show up with our first responders. the benefit concerts that are happening on tv. we can continue to underestimate the power of a national disaster. if you ask what the biggest threat is that they face on a daily basis the average american will tell you that it is either nuclear disaster or terrorist attack. and in fact both of those things are really unlikely. it's much more likely that we are going to be the victims of a natural disaster.

we lack the preparedness along the way. i think that's what we really need to be focusing on. we have the potential to invest more we have the potential to invest more in the technology that would allow us to monitor earthquakes and start to really understand what causes them. and why some little quakes become big cakes. we have the technology to institute a national warning system multiple countries including what we might consider second world countries already have the spirit by making the sorts of these sorts of things a priority for country we are giving them the power to do the work that they need to do. we're making sure that we don't have to necessarily have the catastrophic disasters that we are responding to. in the work on the front and has multiple benefits.

investing in better levies for the mississippi river and a better bridge system. we are changing things left and right. that is a little bit of what i look at in the book. i hang out with some really fascinated seismologists. who are quirky and interesting and weird. i want to set off earthquakes to see what happens. they're just really a lot of fun to hang out with. some of the more iconic places in the united states. one of my very favorite stories in the movie scene and

dress which is the film that shows the catastrophic failure of the hoover dam in the filmmakers approach it and said can we film this movie here. the colorado river careens out. mayhem. they said absolutely not. it's impossible that that would happen. and so because they have screen and script approval they can say you're not allowed to film this here. why would you do wouldn't you do this. some of you may be familiar with the movie transformers which is about the mega death robot who comes from a distant galaxy and a massive robot is there to destroy the planet. and in the 1920s and 30s we see this mega deadly robot

that has come to take over the planet. so we decide what we need to do is create a holding facility to imprison this mega deadly robot. they got approval to film at the hoover dam. you will let the scenario go. we find that a far more plausible scenario the pop-culture depiction of earthquakes. i focus on some really interesting pop culture figures. her superpower is the more gin she drinks and the more drunk she gets the largest earthquake she can set off. as a comic commentator said. a lot of these superheroes she's actually a villain. trying to come to an

understanding of how they function and what we can do and how we can move forward and think about this in terms of resiliency and where we go from here. that is the book in a nutshell. i would love to answer questions or hear your earthquake stories if you have them. thank you all so much for coming. [applause]. weil, before i forget. i just want to warn you that it was created there. the seismic event let me start

off at first by saint. [indiscernible] it seems to me that there is damage as a result of an act of god there is no little response to this. two him denver five corporations if something can be proven through sums or of some sort of human endorsed tracking and using the earth to store i'm wondering how far along if something happens in

this broader range that affects people all around people will say what i have to do with that because it only happened on my audience. the earthquakes don't look at the of a map. can you talk to about this whole issue of liability is there some way of creating this kind of moral hazard to begin to cause people to think harder and longer about where they build and what type of waste they inject. that is the quickest way to create some sort of a legal regime to present bad behavior. it is a great question. if you look at places like los

angeles and hollywood for instance they have ordinances that say you can't build with an x within x number of feet within a known fault. that is when when they are trying to deal with it. most of the faults there are unknown faults. no one has successfully sued because they had damaged because of a human -induced earthquake. they tried to push through a powerful and provocative suit that tried to hold people accountable for the damage that was been down there as well. part of the issue is that where an earthquake occurs is not necessarily where the human activity was. one of the test cases that i look at is a salt mine that is in utah that we use to store race -- waste.

as we continue to do that we started to see earthquakes but they weren't necessarily happening right there. they have the ripple effect. that's part of the competition as well. and then proving improving the connection is really hard. the idea of culpability and liability is not something that anybody has successfully prosecuted but i think it's a really interesting point. what do we do when we find out about hazard is a really difficult question. if you look at for instance the nuclear power plant diablo canyon in california they stopped that because they decided that look this places bill without real understanding of the seismic potential that happened here. it was eventually in next with the national disaster and then we eventually said because that of the seismic hazard.

about 20 miles north one of the most beleaguered powerplants continued to be pointed to by the nrc for having problems it was built unbeknownst to the people who built it on a very significant fault zone. some experts say is capable from a 7.802 and 8.0 earthquake. what we do then. when we know that. do we close this power plant. i damage to this reactor in this case could actually result in the mandatory evacuation of new york city. so far we have them. therefore the possible place for flooding. because it is so beleaguered and set to close. it got a pass from the nrc for

the retrofit that was required. one of our most beleaguered powerplants and we tell them that we don't have to have the retrofit and renovation. i think that's really important. as the planet continues to change. as our weather patterns change in places that did not had it before. as a community we have to start asking some really difficult questions. if for instance as i am you lose in a place that just became a flood zone that was never a flood zone before. do you move do you say i'm just can have to get flood insurance. do you mandate that flood insurance. that is a really hard

question. some community in washington state to different native american communities there are cnet go into the sea and they have made the decision at their own expense with some federal funding to relocate their entire community. that's another option. we are starting to see communities having to ask these very difficult questions. they come with a lot of emotional repercussions as well. and i think anybody has really figured out the answer. not only the household level but with the community level as well. [indiscernible] what's happening in terms of planning ahead. you're right there is a

different answer at the local, state and the federal level. some states like california are doing quite a bit actually. and one positive thing that has come out of california's earthquake history as with every passing earthquake we've learned a lot more about one particular thing whether it is schools or performance of the hospital and with each passing disaster california's instituted more and more building codes plans along the way like that. a lot of experts say no. one of the things that's really interesting about building codes for instance is that it exists so that people can safely exit the building the building code does not exist to make it habitable again after a disaster. this is a big surprise. probably not actually. and one of the things that were really good to see in a place like salt lake city is

tens of thousands of people who are than homeless. because guess they got yes they got out of the building and that's awesome but they can get back in. that's one thing to ask. some communities have said yes we do others have said no. the city of memphis sat and looked at it and said do we want to institute much stricter building codes here. it will be expensive for everyone involved. the cost-benefit cost benefit analysis did not work out. are we can invest in something that may or may not happen and his get a pay for it. do we want national codes do we want national structures in place certainly for my money when it comes to national spending i want tsunami monitoring system. i want devices in those fault areas and i really want that national early warning system. what some of the most innovative work that's been done right now is crowdsourcing for this kind of

warning system. there is is really great function on your cell phone that knows if it's in portrait or landscape that same function that allows earphone to know that can record jostling and distinguish it from you dancing on a friday night are you experiencing an earthquake. there are these apps that are in beta testing right now through the universities. if you are willing to have it. and it anonymized is your data so it does not know it's john smith in baltimore but it knows it's a phone in baltimore it can record these earthquakes. this is really smart. in a place that is not for instance in los los angeles that has a lot of seismometers on the ground.

we had millions and millions of them. they become this earthquake warning system and they can give people that 30 to 45 seconds hugely earthquake prone great seismic risk. investing in this kind of technology which is actually pretty inexpensive we get a ton of bang for the buck. something that is really trying to go backwards. trying to repair. at the delinquency that we have seen since world war ii in terms of our investment international system. as a kind of legislation that i would really like to see.

[indiscernible] thank you so much. we learned more about this. keep up the wonderful work.