The earthquake that devastated Nepal almost two weeks ago is a reminder that while natural disasters cannot be precisely predicted, they can be foreseen.

Nepal has had major earthquakes before. It will have them again. The real problem is less the seismic activity than the inability of that poor, landlocked nation to prepare for what it knows is coming on some unknown date.

Similarly, we know that major earthquakes will hit California, that massive hurricanes will blow through Florida and the Gulf Coast, that huge tornadoes will rip through Oklahoma and Kansas and, yes, Minnesota will get killer blizzards. Every place on the planet carries some sort of natural risk. The key is preparation.

Consider for a moment the New Madrid Fault, named for the city in southeastern Missouri near it. It generated, in late 1811 and early 1812, a series of earthquakes powerful enough to be felt in such distant cities as New York and Philadelphia and to reputedly briefly reverse the flow of the Mississippi River.

There wasn’t much in the quake zone then to damage. But today we have major metropolitan areas in the region. A quake there as powerful as the one that rocked Kathmandu last month might not turn St. Louis or Memphis to rubble, but it would certainly be damaging at the least.

This nation does not lack for resources, but it has at times been lax in preparing for disasters that lie in the unknown future. New Orleans’ levees were poorly designed and ill-maintained, and so the city was swamped by Hurricane Katrina. An estimated third of the damage wrought in Miami-Dade County by Hurricane Andrew in 1992 could have been avoided had building codes been properly enforced.

Americans are increasingly settling in areas vulnerable to wide-scale disasters. They need to be ready for those calamities when they arrive.

 

— Mankato Free Press, May 6