In a media interview in January 2010, scientist Robert Yeats sounded the alarm on Port-au-Prince, Haiti, as an 'earthquake time bomb', a region at critical risk of major seismic activity. One week later, a catastrophic earthquake struck the city, leaving over 100,000 dead and triggering a humanitarian crisis. In this timely study, Yeats sheds new light on other earthquake hotspots around the world and the communities at risk. He examines these seismic threats in the context of recent cultural history, including economic development, national politics and international conflicts. Descriptions of emerging seismic resilience plans from some cities provide a more hopeful picture. Essential reading for policy-makers, infrastructure and emergency planners, scientists, students and anyone living in the shadow of an earthquake, this book raises the alarm so that we can protect our vulnerable cities before it's too late.
Draws comparisons between the capacity of first-world and developing-world countries to prepare for a major earthquake
Combines science with history to present a detailed, informative, and timely study of the world's earthquake time bombs
Explores how the combination of mass migration to megacities coupled with poor building standards is putting ever more people at risk
Author(s): Robert Yeats
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2015
Language: English
Pages: 340
Cover
Earthquake Time Bombs
Contents
Acknowledgments
Why this book
Part I. Earthquakes, Deep Time and the Population Explosion
1. Plate tectonics and why we have earthquakes
2. An earthquake primer
3. Deep time
4. When's the next big one
5. Population explosion and increased earthquake risk to megacities
Part II. Earthquake Time Bombs
6. San Francisco Bay Area
7. Los Angeles
8. Seattle, Portland and Vancouver - Cascadia Subduction Zone
9. Japan Tokyo and the Kansai
10. Wellington, New Zealand
11. Santiago, Chile
12. Prologue in central China
13. Age of Enlightenment and the 1755 Lisbon earthquake
14. Jerusalem earthquakes in the Holy Land
15. Istanbul responding to an official earthquake warning
16. Tehran the next earthquake in the Islamic Republic of Iran
17. Kabul decades of war and Babur’s warning
18. Earthquakes in the Himalaya
19. Myanmar and the Sagaing fault
20. Metro Manila, the Philippines
21. Lima, Peru Inca earthquake-resistant construction and a bogus American earthquake prediction
22. Andean earthquakes in Quito and Guayaquil, Ecuador
23. Caracas lots of oil, but little interest in earthquakes
24. Haiti, which lost its gamble, and Jamaica and Cuba (not yet)
25. Mexico City bowl of jello inherited from the Aztecs
26. Central America and the earthquake that brought down a dictator
27. East African Rift Valley a tale of two cities
Part III. Summary and Recommendations
28. Where do we go from here
References
Index
