Earthquake Expert Warns of Economic Damage

From cracked oil and natural gas pipelines to contaminated public water supplies, the nation’s economy could be the biggest casualty of the next major Midwest earthquake, an earthquake expert warned.

Geologic engineering professor Dave Rogers of Missouri University of Science and Technology outlined the grim scenario to an audience of scientists, military officers and emergency responders from five of the eight states in the New Madrid Seismic Zone.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates a 7 to 10 percent chance in the next 50 years of an earthquake similar in intensity to the New Madrid quakes that rocked Memphis, St. Louis and other cities hundreds of miles away nearly 200 years ago.

Those odds increase to greater than 50 percent for an earthquake of magnitude 6.0 or greater over the next five decades — and such smaller quakes could still cripple Mississippi River barge traffic, mangle interstate highways, sever fiber optic cables, lead to fuel shortages and turn the mid-American economy around, Rogers said.

“The economic consequences are horrid,” said Rogers. “The shock factor of having unavailable fuel would be unprecedented.”

Rogers’ remarks came at a meeting intended to unite scientists who study the still poorly understood central U.S. earthquakes with county health workers, emergency management crews, highway planners and others.

A hazards analysis offered by Amr Elnashai, director of the Mid-America Earthquake Center at the University of Illinois, is built upon the scenarios described by Rogers.

An earthquake of 7.7 magnitude along the New Madrid fault line, 7.1 magnitude along the Wabash Valley fault or 5.9 along the East Tennessee fault zone could cause economic damage as high as $60 billion in Tennessee, and $40 billion in Missouri, he told a crowd of nearly 300.

The most recent large New Madrid quake, estimated at magnitude 6.5, struck in 1895 near Charles-ton, Mo. More recently, an April temblor over the Wabash fault zone in Illinois measured 5.2 but was felt in Indianapolis and Chicago.