Earthquakes in California: Yet People Still Choose to Live Here

Warning: Undefined variable $num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 126

Warning: Undefined variable $posts_num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 127

One point that Ted Steinburg really hammers in his essay, “Smoke and Mirrors: The San Francisco Earthquake and Seismic Denial”, is that city businessmen and investors were keen on calling the destruction of San Francisco in 1906 a result of the fire that erupted after the magnitude 7.7 earthquake and not the earthquake itself. Steinburg’s point of “seismic denial” really paints a new way of seeing what it means to live in an earthquake prone part of the world. Now the businessmen and investors were quick to realize that negative attention to San Francisco as an earthquake central would quell any sort of quick rebuilding and future investments. Earthquakes ultimately cannot be avoided and are unpredictable; people knew that back then and still do today so those “deniers” made sure to spin the disaster as a fire, a disaster than can theoretically be more controlled. They aren’t wrong for wanting to protect their assets but it’s dangerous to deny that an area isn’t more prone to disasters if the history of that area says so otherwise. @armando35 brings up an excellent point that this denial of earthquakes will “[affect] the way people would view earthquakes in the future.”

Which brings me to my point; if we now know that California is more prone to earthquakes, large ones too like the Big One that is predicted to occur in the near future, is it not foolish that we choose to live here? California is a big state with a massive population that sits on one of the most active faults in the world. Hardships and inconveniences aside, if staying alive is just choice between here and the next state over, I would be inclined to think that the next state over is safer. Are we all victims of earthquake denial? And this doesn’t just speak to California but to all parts of the world that experiences regular disasters. Perhaps there is something more than just denying the dangers of earthquakes…