on the natural and man-made crisis of earthquakes and their future earthquakes are likely to occur. this event took place at the café bookshop in baltimore. thank you very much for coming out tonight i appreciate it. at the end of 2017 not so long ago, we were celebrating and that is probably a bad word, we were commemorating the anniversary of superstore and sandy that affected a large part of the eastern seaboard easterni was reporting on the storm as it struck and my research for that became what was my favorite super storthird put thesuper sti

was looking at how it was that we had gotten it so wrong and how it was that they failed to issue orders and how it was so many buildings and infrastructure were destroyed during that storm. and in my research i spent a lot of time at the national hurricane center and the meteorologists who were incredibly talented kept telling me the same thing over and over that we are just not very good at this and for testing and predicting the storms were preparing on the front end for the kind of habit that is wrecked by these storms and a thinking about the reflections of infrastructure and how it is that we respond to natural disaster, it occurred to me that for all that is powerful about

the hurricane they are nowhere near the most powerful natural phenomenon. when you think of the sheer explosive powder, earthquakes are exponentially stronger and so i started to think hell do we prepare for those for natural disasters and to what degree are we prepared for that and what i found was kind of chilling. it was difficult to predict. we have a lot of technology we can use to get inside of a hurricane and so we have the air national guard capable of flying these directly into a storm they can drop these little technology pieces called drop zones put pressure wind speed, pressure and those sort of things. we have radar, satellite, and with all this technology we can try to predict the track of a hurricane and try to give people

72, 48 hours worth of notice it at we still see the profound devastation that places like houston and puerto rico. so all of that being said, hurricanes are a no-brainer and that became very quickly abundant to me when i was doing my research they are the least known natural disasters and we know less about the inner workings of the planet than we do so for every seismologist i met while i was researching the book, they all have some kind of an analogy they would say we know more about that the earthquake's and they would fill it in with things like dark matter. something, anything and when you think about it that's where it comes from. if you think about in this year

alone, 2017, we have 107 earthquake sunday society deemed as significant and most of them you haven't heard about because they happened in places like the canary islands but they are happening every day and to thine thing about them is we don't know when or where. there are 2100 in the united states and for each one of those we think there's anywhere between ten, 100, 1,050 haven't discovered yet and when you think about the last 200 years, every single earthquake has occurred on a fault we didn't know about prior we knew about those like the san andreas fault but when it comes to the actual fault that's happening we don't know about them until it

happens. most of those we do know about our in mississippi and that isn't necessarily because it is more sort of seismically predispose that when you talk to the psychologistthese ecologisty listen, if you want to be really terrified, think about the earthquakthat theearthquake pote northeast. we don't know anything about that and basically that's because when you think about it, earthquakes are happening 5 miles, 30 miles under the surface of the earth we don't know when and where they are going to have an, we can't get the technology there to measure them so all the candidates postmortem after an earthquake has happened and so they remain this phenomenon that we have to guess. what we do know is that the united states is profoundly seismically active and the potential is happening just about everywhere.

unless you live in miami you are probably at risk for an earthquake. wilwill it happen tomorrowwill n 500 years or 5,000 years we don't know that we do know that the potential is there and is so i'd want us to do with this book is set out the classic american road trip and drive around to get a sense of how real the seismic hazard is and what the potential is and what we still need to do to be not only sustainable tha but resilient communities so i embarked on a road trip and there were some places i knew i needed to get to. we know that is and how eerily

possible and the pacific northwest is primed for a major earthquake and would come with a sort of resulting tsunami that could do a lot of devastation. we also know places like salt lake city, very ready and poised to have a major earthquake so i knew i needed to get to places like that but what surprised me is other places you might not expect like memphis, new york city, washington, d.c.. so a lot of my research is going to these places and talking to smart people about the work they are doing and trying to understand that the threat and why it's there. some of the things that surprised me is the sort of snowballed ripple effect of what the potential has. i have one section of the book i spent quite a bit of time in memphis and some of you may be aware o of the series and serie, 1812 where we have all sorts of

wonderful stories about this that it made the mississippi river flow backwards and the liberty bell crack so they are not true bu that what is true in the strongest happened and 1811 and 1812. this is bad news and we don't want anybody to suffer but it's also bad not only for the country as a whole hole but for the commodities and something you may not be aware of is the overwhelming majority of all of the national commerce has this method on any given day something like 40% of all of the commodities have one single

bridge, something like 4 million packages fly in and out of the airport every night, so it has their world headquarters and if you want an exciting night, spent the night on the tarmac and watched the 300 come in from around the world they stack them up so they all land at the same time, australia to savanna georgia they offload and sort them in this place called them h. rex which is what you would want them h. rex to look like and they get distributed on the plane didn't get sent out again. they are processing about 1.5 million packages and so we are a place like memphis to go down we would have a standstill and when you think about a place like that of his contracts, mortgages, pay checks from

amazon orders but then there's these other things you might not think about. two of the largest contractors are the u.s. military and the u.s. post office. so we not only have things like again the packages in those books that we have medicine, car parts, and military equipment that could be much everything you can think of flying through this house every single night. memphis going down and taking into account things like the mississippi river, still a major trade with things like grain, petroleum, things like that in the system, with one of the most fragile of our infrastructure systems. memphis going down doesn't just affect memphis, it affects all of us jus which is why when they designated the foremost sort of

catastrophic natural disasters because of the sort of revolt that some of the interested in how this could be and what the effect would be if it happened. when you think about this infrastructure, we need to be asking big questions about that. every few years the american society of engineers gives the united states a report card and throughout thfor about the lasts we've averaged between a d. or d, and this is because over a series of decades we have chosen to invest in things other than the national infrastructure and when i see infrastructure i think about it in two different ways to end there's also the metaphoric infrastructure that is equally as important.

we have underfunded all of these historically over decades. i live in the state of maine and about a week and a half ago we had a big wind storm as the northeast ar passed through andn the state of 1.2 million people they've lost power largely because we are dealing with a sort of 19th century system of hanging wires on the polls but we no longer have the 19th century weather or systems in place to. they really call attention to that for the degree to which the environment has kept up with our

physical or natural environment and we underestimated the power of the earthquakes historically. the last major earthquake was 89 in the world series earthquake which some of you may recall that it was catastrophic you may remember the bridge systems and the devastating images that came out of that. while i would like to believe that it wasn't so long ago, i collected the history and imagination for keeping track of those things and so we consistently underestimate the risk that they posed and it doesn't take much if you think about for instance new york city on average they've witnessed a moderate earthquake every 100

years and that goes back about five or 600 years and was fairly regular. the last audited week was 1883 and so using the sort of historical precedent one could say. it's about 40 years overdue for the moderate earthquake. we can't predict earthquakes or say it's going to happen, but based on the historical averages, this is true. a moderate earthquake that has happened in new york city at 300 years would create more than september 11. think about that. and it's not necessarily the structures, it's a brown stones and the masonry that pretends

first responders from getting places and the ripple effect of the fires created because the caste lines have been ruptured and fire departments can't get to put out and that is the sort of scenario that we have to be confronted with a. it's the way we understand risk and do som some of you are proby familiar with the earthquake happening around the state of oklahoma and those that used to be the least seismically active in the union and is now the most seismically active in the low

48. we have relative scientific certainty to sort of suggest or even argue that the overwhelming majority are caused as a result of wastewater injection happens. so they inject super high pressure. it is as well as the water that they inject it into huge amount of salt water that exists from when that area was covered by a shallow agency and they bring all this wastewater up and then depending where you are in the country is either settling in the pools if you are in a place that pennsylvania or oklahoma that is reinjected into these wells and changes the pressure

of defaults that were already primed to get up. they are dealing with the shallow earthquakes that sounds like bombs going off and one family was a survivor of nuremberg and he fought in the korean war as they both said those situations were less terrifying and unsettling for us. i sat on the patio for three hours and heard these explosions that do minimal damage and cracked foundations and lost a few plates off. it's become to human rights thes issue in the environmental justice and as the earthquake

grow then we start to see these larger threats happening as we well. it turned out as a species we are really good at setting of earthquakes. we do it all the time. when the hoover dam was built and the reservoir behind the verdana we set off 10,000 earthquake just like filling in the reservoir. we set them off through mining and earthquakes through tunnel building. there was a large complex that set off hundreds of earthquakes because of the weight of the building. as the technology improved and we did these deeper wells and

minds we are setting off more earthquakes. the issue isn't just that we are doing that but that the infrastructure hasn't kept up. what's happening is we thought we knew, but very little, is changing as we know even less so the question then becomes what do we do with this. when i talk to first responders, this is what they wanted me to come and tell you now is not that there is a sort of doomsday scenario but as a nation and communities as a household there's so much we can do. we tried hard to predict earthquakes and as a nation we have invested tens of millions of dollars. we tried to track them to see if

they would tell us. we tried to put devices down into the zones but so far we have been mostly unsuccessful. we will continue to be unsuccessful. we will never be able to predict earthquakes but that shouldn't discourage us because there are other things we can do. mexico did a couple of things first on anniversary of the deadly 1985 earthquake that killed thousands and thousands after that happened in mexico, the nation instituted a national drill system where every year on the anniversary mexico undertakes a nature trail so in the hours prior, they were

cracks practicing. they instituted after the earthquake the first early warning system in the history of the planet and so after this happened or before it happened, people had 20, 30, 45 seconds to prepare and that doesn't sound like much time and i was skeptical as well that i spent some time at the university of california berkeley that is developing what we hope will be the first early warning system and the practice. you can grab your infant daughter, get under a table, stop a train from entering the tunnel, diverge a plane that's about to land, have kids in the classroom take cover.

to spark us to start asking these questions what can we do to prepare a platina was the inevitable next earthquake. when it comes to a household for instance there are things we should be doing in terms of being prepared for any natural disaster. when the power went out and meandering between the storm most people didn't have water or a weeks worth of food and were not prepared to go out to eat even though we should note that is an entirely likely scenario so understanding what we are not going to have enough scenario.

knowing how to communicate with them in the event i don't have cell phone technology, knowing where we can meet or what we can do is really important and this is where it comes into this idea how can we be a resilient society? one of the things i focus on is a small town in the case of the peninsula in washington state. it's a working town, and economically modest town mostly blue-collar. they are right in the zone for a sin on the end we know a major tsunami that looks a whole lot like the 2011 i 2011 sin on me e germans did these come devastated so much, that is a

real possibility for a place like the peninsula in washington and so knowing that, what they decided to do is take action. so this modest town passed a major referendum for something like $8 million they decided that they were going to build a tsunami sheltering station at the top of their new grade school so they knew they could keep all the kids in their district safe so it is an incredibly sophisticated system with high walls built high above the system and they've got it down to 27 seconds.

we are good at responding to natural disasters and i think it is a testament to the generosity is of the spirit. then we call this to the sort of benefibenefit concerts and stuff happening on tv we send teddy bears and donate blood and we are at that sort of thing and underestimate the. of the nuclear disaster or terrorist attack and infect both of those are really likely. i think that is what we need to be focusing on. we have this ability of

earthquakes and we have the potential to invest more. we have the potential to invest more in the technology that would allow us to monitor earthquakes to start to understand what causes them. we have the technology to institute a warning system and multiple countries including how we might consider second world countries. they are given the power to do the work they need to do and we are making sure that we don't necessarily have these scenarios we are responding to because we've done the work on the front end and it has multiple benefits beyond whether or not an earthquake happened us over the mississippi river investing in a better bridge system in memphis

doesn't just help in this. between climate change and this activity we are changing things left and right and it is upon us to create an infrastructure to respond to those changes, so that is a little bit of what i look at in the book. places like yellowstone, the hoover dam. it's a failure in the hoover dam and the filmmakers of san

andreas approached it and said can we filme film this movie isn earthquake, the colorado river careens out and they say absolutely not. some of you may be familiar with the movie transformers. we see this robot that has come to take over the planet so we decided what we need to do is create a facility to in prison so we created the hoover dam to

host the deadly robot. thank god so you will let this scenario go. some of it is looking at that and kind of pop-culture which we love to love and we love to be terrified by a focus on some pop-culture figures, but the most respected super history in thofthe world, her superpower ie more shame she drinks, the more drunk she get some of that is who her superpower. [inaudible] trying to come to an understanding of why we feel about them the way we do and what we can do.

for any natural disaster that's my favorite thing to talk about. thank you so much for coming. [applause] we have this tradition [inaudible] let me start with this question

it seems to me as a result there is little to no responsibility [inaudible] if something can be proven to a whether it is to store a. a. if something happens.

people say what do i have to do with that. it only happened on my land. it seems earthquakes don't look at the geography of a map. if you can talk to us about this whole issue of liability is that a way of creating this kind of moral hazard to begin to cause people think longer and harder about where they build and what type of waste they inject into the earth it seems to me that is the quickest way to create a regime to prevent bad behavior and maybe you can comment. >> certainly if you look at places like los angeles and hollywood for instance some say you can't build within x. number of feet so you have to be at

least 100 feet away so that is one way they try to do with that and it doesn't solve the problem of most. they tried to push through a powerful and provocative suits that holds people accountable for the damage being done. part of the issue is where the earthquake occurs isn't necessarily where one of the test cases via lookout is a we use it to store waste and as we continue to do that they were not necessarily happening right there and they have a ripple effect that went out so that is part of the complication as well

and sort out proving that connection is hard, so the idea of culpability and liability isn't something that they've prosecuted but it is an interesting point in terms of what do we do when we find out. when you look at the nuclear power plant. they decided this place was built without real understanding of the potential and it was eventually mixed with this $10 billion national disaster they said we are not going to do this but that test case basis if you take something like indian point nuclear power plant 20 miles north on the hunt they

could have been pointed to by having problems unbeknownst to the people that built it on a very significant fault zone. do we close this power plant and say listen, damage to this reactor in its worst case could actually result in a mandatory evacuation and so far we haven't. that power plant that is also on the hudson because it is so beleaguered amsouth to close in 2020 to 2022 got the past four to retrofit required so we take one of the most beleaguered power plants and tell them we

don't have to have the sort of ritual this renovation to get you up to snuff for these type of events. so that is the case again it's certainly responsibility and that is important to consider and that is the question of as the planet continues to change a. they did and habits before and we have to start asking some difficult questions. if for instance you live in a place that just became a flood zone that wasn't before, what do you do, do you move or say aren't you going to get flood insurance, do you mandate, these are the hard questions. some communities for instance in washington state literally see it starts to washington for seat

and made the decision at their own expense to relocate the entire community so we are starting to see environmental refugees and communities having to ask these questions and i am about anybody has necessarily to get out the answer. the clustering of what's happening at the legislative level in terms of planning ahead it's different that the levels in states like california probably not a surprise it's happening quite a bit and one positive thing that's come out of the history is with every

passing earthquake, we've learned a lot more about one particular thing, whether its schools, the performance of hospitals and with each passing disaster as more and more codes. one of the things that's interesting is if exists so people can safely exit a building but it doesn't happen after the disaster and this is a big surprise. one of the things we are going to see is hundreds of thousands who were then homeless because yes they got out of the building and that is what we want to have beehappen but then they cannot t back in.

do we want peace building codes anthese building codesand some . others said no for instance the city of memphis said he wanted have much stricter building codes here and they decided the cost-benefit analysis didn't work out, so that is the question are we going to invest in something that may or may not have been in who is going to pay for it, do we want the national code and certainly in the my money when it comes to national spending i want a robust system, i want out there in the ocean and they really wanted national early warning system. one thing they do is look at crowd sourcing and if you all have a cell phone, there is a

great function that allows your phone to know the direction it's being held can distinguish between you dropping your phone or experiencing an earthquake and so there are these out are perfectly in testing right now through a consortium of universities where if you are willing to have it installed on your phone so that it doesn't know it can record these earthquakes so it becomes this early warning system and this is really smart. in a place that isn't los angeles that has a lot of seismometers on the ground in a place like say new york city thabutdoesn't have the monitorig system we have millions of cell phones that becomes an

earthquake warning system and they can give the 30 to 45 45 seconds it's brilliant in a place like nepal, great seismic risk, they have about six seismometers in the country that something like 10 million cell phones, so investing in this kind of technology that is pretty inexpensive we get a ton of bang for the buck and so that is what i would like to see coming a and a very robust infrastructure plan, something that is kind of going backwards and trying to repair the delinquency that we have seen in terms of the investment in the system that is the kind of legislation i'd like to see.

[laughter] thank you so much. we've learned more. keep up the wonderful work. [applause]

we are featuring best-selling fiction writers from the program in depth fiction edition. joijoining us live at noon eastn with walter mosley, the recent book down the river unto the sea and the other books include devil in a blue dress which was made into a motion picture plus

over 40 critically acclaimed books and series during the program we will be taking phone calls and facebook messages. the special series with author walter mosley sunday live from noon to 3 p.m. eastern on booktv on c-span2. asked, just on his book the water will come. it looks at the rise of sea levels and changing coastlines. this program took place at skidmore college in saratoga springs new york. [inaudible conversations]