[StBernard] Is there anywhere safe to live?

[Westley Annis]

Is there anywhere safe to live? 
Updated 4/20/2006 11:56 AM ET
By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY

There was almost a 20% increase in natural disasters worldwide in 2005,
according to the United Nations and Belgium's Louvain research center.
Damage reached $159 billion, up 71% from 2004, almost entirely because of
destruction from Hurricane Katrina.

As images of devastation flashed onto TV screens, those far from the
tempests may have felt some satisfaction that they had chosen homes in safe
havens. But not so fast. From East to West, the USA is a patchwork of danger
zones.

Bad weather is brewing

Natural disasters, from tsunamis to hurricanes, have wreaked havoc in recent
years. And there's no let-up in sight.

Tornadoes have been tearing up the Midwest and the mid-South this spring. In
this month alone, tornadoes killed 36 people in Tennessee. Twelve tornadoes
struck Iowa and Illinois last week, killing one woman.

Experts say this year could be especially bad for other natural disasters.

Hurricane season, which begins June 1, is predicted to be more active than
normal; the Northeast is especially overdue for a powerful hurricane.

Wildfires have burned more than 2.18 million acres this spring, the
beginning of what could be one of the worst fire seasons ever, the National
Interagency Fire Center says.

The acreage burned nationwide this year is 3½ times the 586,586 acres burned
on average by this time of year.

Fires have been especially bad in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas,
Nebraska and New Mexico. In Florida, drought and hurricane debris have
officials there worried about wildfires.

Did you know?

Mount Rainier's volatile future

Mount Rainier in Washington state has the largest ice cap of any mountain in
the lower 48. When it erupts, as it's expected to do sometime in the next
200 years, that ice cap probably will melt, sending a 30-foot-high wall of
volcanic mud called lahar down its sides. This loose, gooey mixture of
scalding mud can flow up to 25 mph. It kills by blunt trauma or suffocation.

Hot nights are most dangerous

It's not the daytime highs that get you, it's the nighttime lows — or the
absence of them. What kills people in heat waves isn't the highest
temperature but the fact that evening temperatures don't dip. The body
doesn't get a chance to cool down. The more days with high nighttime
temperatures, the more people die.

A cyclone by any other name ... 

A hurricane is not always a hurricane. Sometimes it's a typhoon or a
cyclone. To a meteorologist, they're all tropical cyclones — storms forming
over tropical or subtropical ocean waters with maximum sustained winds
exceeding 73 mph. But the names change depending on point of origin. It's a
hurricane in the North Atlantic and North Pacific, a typhoon in the
Northwest Pacific west of the international date line, and a cyclone in the
Southwest Pacific and Indian Oceans.

Flash-flood waters shallow but strong

Shallow floodwaters are sometimes the most dangerous. Flowing water only1
foot deep exerts 500 pounds of lateral force. In a flash flood, water only 2
feet deep can lift up a 1,500-pound car, which is then pushed or rolled off
the road by the 1,000-pound force of the flowing water.

Earthquakes reach beyond West Coast 

The West Coast isn't the only earthquake zone in the USA. Salt Lake City
sits on the Wasatch fault line, and geologists expect that it's likely to
get a magnitude-7 earthquake in the next 300 years. And New Madrid, Mo., has
never been equaled for the number, intensity and size of a swarm of quakes —
1,874 — that hit over four months in 1811-12. The destruction ended the
town's importance as the "Gateway of the West."

Our crowded world is more vulnerable

There is one certainty about natural disasters: There are more people around
to get in harm's way. The population quadrupled in the 20th century, from
about 1.5 billion in 1900 to 6.5 billion in 2006. People have pushed into
increasingly hazardous settings. We farm on the slopes of active volcanoes,
build homes and industries in river floodplains and move to hurricane-prone
coastlines. When disaster strikes today, the damage to people and property
is magnified because there are simply more people and things to be hurt.

Dust Bowl is among worst U.S. disasters 

One of the worst natural disasters to hit the USA was the multiple-year
drought in the 1930s that created the Dust Bowl. Covering more than 100
million acres in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado and Kansas, the area
supported mostly perennial grasses until the beginning of the 20th century.
Government incentives and a series of uncharacteristically wet years led
farmers to plant much of the region in wheat in the 1920s. When the rains
stopped, as is common in the area, massive dust storms sucked up the newly
plowed earth, turned day into night, and pushed as many as a quarter-million
Americans from their homes. The disaster led to the creation of the Federal
Soil Conservation Service.

Everywhere you go. . .

New England has nor'easters, the South gets pummeled by hurricanes with
distressing frequency, and in the spring, Tornado Alley cuts a great swath
down the center of the country.

And let's not forget the deadly blizzards and heat waves in the Great
Plains, firestorms in the Southwest and killer floods along the nation's
great river systems.

It only gets worse the farther west you go. Salt Lake City is waiting for a
magnitude-7 earthquake, exceeded only by Oregon, Washington and Alaska, all
in line for magnitude-9 temblors. And the entire coast is at risk for the
same kind of tsunamis that devastated Southeast Asia.

Last but not least, mountains up and down the coast are primed to erupt in
the next 1,000 years, sending 30-foot rivers of volcanic mud racing down
river valleys fast filling up with new subdivisions.
 

  
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