This is what a devastating earthquake in California would look like 👉🏽 I went to Christchurch, New Zealand, which suffered a devastating quake in 2011, to get a peek at what lies in California’s future when a big quake returns to our state. Some lessons: latimes.com/california/sto…
• The “recovery” from a big one will be far harder than we all imagined. Hopes for a quick, full recovery are fantasies and set us up for disappointment. Know that a big quake will leave forever scars; and the more we can do before the quake, the better latimes.com/california/sto…
• The economic consequences will last much longer than you think; perhaps generations. Folks in Christchurch told me Californians should identify, now, areas we know could be heavily damaged — and think about the rebuild before disaster strikes. Lessons: latimes.com/california/sto…
• The mental toll in a natural disaster will be bad. A quake can increase traumatic stress, and we need to all be aware of it and get help and help others. Allowing our prejudices about mental health to ignore the problem will make things worse. More: latimes.com/california/sto…
The Christchurch quake was not the most powerful quake — it was a magnitude 6.2. But it hit in possibly the worst possible spot: right underneath one of New Zealand’s oldest cities, with too many unretrofitted buildings. Shaking intensity map by @caseymmiller 
Future plausible quakes in California would be much worse. A magnitude 7.8 on the San Andreas would send severe, violent & extreme shaking across many counties. Here’s a zoomed in look at L.A., at the same scale as the previous 🗺 @caseymmiller latimes.com/california/sto…
And in the San Francisco Bay Area (where lots of earth scientists are right now at #AGU19), bad shaking would be triggered in Silicon Valley, the East Bay and North Bay from a hypothetical magnitude 7 quake on the Hayward fault 🗺 @caseymmiller latimes.com/california/sto…
