Hi Chris,

Historically earthquakes in the US have not killed that many people, the only problem is that times have changed considerably since the 1906 earthquake.

As you know hazard planners have already drawn up very dim prospects for the quake that one day will arrive in Metropolitan SF or LA. When you drive around SF and see one apartment house or single family dwelling attached on both sides to another, street after street, I think it paints a pretty clear picture of a large hazardous situation.

If you will recall, during the Loma Prieta earthquake which was centered near Santa Cruz, quite a distance from SF, the Marina District in SF suffered huge losses. Not only was there a very large fire which took out an area of about 5 city blocks, the entire neighborhood suffered from garages which gave way to the upper structures. SF is full of these kinds of places.

While we only see one major human rescue story circulated from a collapsed building most of the time, we have to understand that if a 7.0 hits closer to SF, this is going to be repeated many times over and more likely than not, there will be some people who can't be rescued, if for no other reason but lack of resources.

They also had a problem with the water lines breaking and fortunately had the water boat set up to bring water to the site of the fire, which of course was a total loss. Due to funding that very effort is no longer in existence today.

There is a major controvery over how many people died in the 1906 earthquake. Jim Berkland did some serious research on this and I believe he said it was about 5,000. They did die in the earthquake and not the fire, but for public relations reasons, the term fire was easier to live with.

Unfortunately, be it an earthquake near SF or a resulting fire, things are probably worse today than they were in 1906 and thus the outcome would not be any better.

I've heard astronomers say there are no more people looking for comets and asteroids than work in one McDonald's restaurant. That's true, but they find them all of the time. I just wonder how many they miss in a given year. Hopefully, not to many.

Going shopping your area at this time of the year I'm sure is more hazardous than an earthquake or a celestial body striking in your neck of the woods. Its not that bad here, but I would be glad to see a break in the rain soon.

Cheers!

Petra