I'm writing this in the style of the New Yorker and their piece on the Cascadia Fault. That horribly weak subduction zone has as much chance of going as Toronto. Although they are always saying that an earthquake is 'overdue', that's really a hunk of garbage. There is no clock ticking, and the uncertainties swamp any estimate.
So, in that tone, the Great Toronto Earthquake is going to happen tomorrow. Can we afford to be any less wild than the West Coast? Of course not, we have a housing bubble to protect. Toronto will really get up there in 'hipster land', if we are a "City That Waits to Die". Think of the parties!
This is all based on good physics, and a lifetime of looking at this stuff for the nuclear plants. At one time they put good money into all of this, and I'm proud of that. Now, it's all run by a PR outfit, and not a speck of work on earthquakes. I'd call them scum, but then the PR flacks would be after me, denying everything.
So, a beautiful M7 plus, will happen along this fault. It already did it once, and left the sunken lands around Hamilton. So lets start the scenario, just like the New Yorker.
It's nine AM in January, temperature at -20 deg Celsius. A beautiful clear day, and the only news is that some crazy 99 year old geophysicist has chained himself to the sag ponds of Hamilton, declaring "The End is Nigh". The old brick schools are filled, traffic is jammed on the Gardner. The nuclear plants are humming at full power, and natural gas is pumping all through the network of high-pressure pipes. What could go wrong?
-to be continued.
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