On Friday, a 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck a fault in Myanmar, killing more than 2,000 people and shaking buildings as far as Bangkok, in neighboring Thailand. What caused this quake and could it happen in the United States? Dr. Lucy Jones, renowned seismologist, joined ForbesWomen editor Maggie McGrath to answer these questions and talk about what it takes to predict and protect ourselves from earthquake damages.
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00:00Hi, everyone. I'm Maggie McGrath, senior editor at Forbes. On Friday, a 7.7 magnitude earthquake
00:10hit central Myanmar, killing at least 1,600 people and likely more and shaking buildings
00:18as far as Bangkok in the neighboring country of Thailand. Joining us to discuss the cause
00:24of this earthquake and whether something similar could happen here in the United States is
00:28Dr. Lucy Jones. She's a seismologist whose research has really improved the way we predict
00:35and also protect ourselves from earthquakes. Dr. Jones, thank you so much for being here.
00:40Thanks for having me.
00:42So let's let's zoom out. You've been studying earthquakes your entire career. Where does
00:48this 7.7 magnitude earthquake in Myanmar rank relative to the earthquakes we've seen in
00:54recent years?
00:55Well, it depends on what ranking criteria we use in terms of societal impact. It's going
01:00to be one of the very highest. We have magnitude that tells us how much energy is released
01:06by a fault, but how much energy gets to people depends on where the fault is with respect
01:11to our cities. And this was a very large earthquake magnitude 7.7. The fault was probably around
01:17400 kilometers long. So and that means every point on that 400 kilometers giving off energy.
01:24And it was located directly under the major cities of of Myanmar. So that Mandalay, the
01:31second largest city, is directly on top of the fault and right where the episode where
01:35it began. But going farther south to the city that used to be known as Rangoon, that's not
01:41far from the end of the fault. I haven't heard anything about what the damage was likely
01:46to have been there. And so you and we presumably don't have very good building codes. And,
01:53you know, making a seismic resistant building takes some forethought. You're just building
02:00a building. You want it to not fall down. You resist gravity. But in an earthquake,
02:04the forces push sideways. And if you haven't built to resist that, they come down very
02:09easily. And we're pretty sure that's the situation in Myanmar.
02:14It's still early days. I saw one economic damage estimate that was north of 60 billion
02:20dollars. And some are saying the total damages could be more than the GDP of Myanmar as a
02:25whole. And Dr. Jones, you were saying there's reason to believe that the death toll could
02:29be almost 10 times that which I stated at the beginning of this conversation.
02:35And maybe and maybe even a hundred times. So the U.S. Geological Survey has developed a
02:40program where they take the information about epicenter magnitude and fault and from
02:46that estimate what the shaking has been around the region and then compare that to where
02:51people are and to the type of construction. And it's proved a pretty reliable estimate
02:56of of where you've really got the significant issues. And they have a greater 68 percent
03:03probability that the fatalities exceed 10,000 and a one in three probability that they are
03:09exceeding 100,000. That's the sort of uncertainty since we we don't know exactly what the
03:15buildings were. The estimated economic losses, the most likely is somewhere between
03:2210 billion and 100 billion.
03:25And that would, I think, exceed the GDP of of Myanmar.
03:31Now, when we talk about what causes earthquakes, is what caused this one any different than
03:36what causes every other one or all earthquakes caused by the same thing?
03:41OK, well, all earthquakes, well, all earthquakes that are on volcanoes respond to stresses
03:48in the earth that are pushing the rocks around. And at some point you exceed, you're able
03:52to overcome the frictional resistance and and start moving down a fault. So the earthquakes
03:58happen on a fault surface, not at a point. And every point on the surface is giving off
04:03energy. What we do see is that those stresses are more likely when we're at what's called
04:10a plate boundary. There's big pieces of the earth's crust that are relatively intact and
04:15move with respect to others. So Myanmar, this fault is the boundary between the Indian and
04:21the Asian plates here in California.
04:24We have a very similar looking fault, the San Andreas fault. It's the boundary between
04:28the Pacific and the North American plates. And this we see a sort of we understand what
04:35those type of plate boundary, what we call transform faults or strike slip faults look
04:39like. It's a vertical fault. It's relatively narrow into the earth. You go you don't have
04:45to go very far down before it gets too hot to have that. But you can be very, very long.
04:50So this earthquake, it's, you know, 7.7. We're still trying to to get the fault length, but
04:56it's probably around 400 kilometers long, about 250 miles. This is very similar to what
05:02we saw in 1906 in San Francisco. Again, the same type of transform fault at the plate
05:07boundary, magnitude 7.7, 440 kilometers length. So but when 1906 happened, it was before we
05:16had building codes, but also before we had too many people. So we talk about it as the
05:20San Francisco earthquake because that was one of the few places that still had people.
05:25But in fact, it ruptured the whole way from Cape Mendocino in the north down to San Juan
05:31Batista is the small town down in the north end of the Central Valley. So as if it would
05:37happen now, we would have many, many more people on top of that fault. But we would
05:42also have better buildings. And at least in California, we have building codes that say
05:48you shouldn't kill somebody with your your building. It's okay if it's a total loss.
05:52That's your choice to make. That's your own economic decision. Just make sure you can't
05:56kill people. So what we think of as seismic resistant codes are not about giving us a
06:00useful building. They're about giving us a building that doesn't collapse on people.
06:05Probably. Try hard. We accept a few percent of our new buildings would collapse in the
06:10worst earthquakes. So now imagine if we had a collapse like what we saw in in Bangkok
06:17in San Francisco, or in downtown Los Angeles. And actually, that's what our building code
06:23is aiming for not to have more than one or two of those. It's not to get rid of them
06:29I was going to end the conversation by asking about the likelihood of this happening in
06:34California. But since we're on the topic, how predictable are these earthquakes? And
06:40were we able to predict this that happened in Myanmar?
06:45It depends on what you mean by predict. We are absolutely certain that an earthquake
06:49very similar to this will happen in Northern California and another one in Southern California.
06:55Because we have those faults there, they have to move basic plate tectonics. When they
07:00move is the part we can't predict. So they average about 100 to 150 years between earthquakes.
07:07It's been over 300 years since the last one in Southern California. But obviously then
07:12there's a lot of variability in the timing on which they happen. But at some point it's
07:15absolutely certain to occur. We will not see as much damage as we're seeing in Myanmar
07:21because we have better building codes. But we do not require our buildings to not fall
07:28down. We expect a few percent of our new buildings to collapse in the strongest shaking. That's
07:35the way our code works. And our older buildings are certain to be having significant problems.
07:43So what you just said about predictability then, if we apply that to what happened in
07:48Myanmar, how much warning did people have? Is there an initial rumble or were people
07:56taken totally by surprise?
07:58They were taken totally by surprise. We can see that if you have a lot of instruments,
08:03which we do here in California or Japan, you can see that the earthquake has begun and
08:09potentially get that message to somebody before the waves themselves get to them. Because
08:15we can communicate at the speed of light and the waves travel at the speed of sound.
08:19So we might get a few seconds here. But you need a modern system and they don't have that
08:23in Myanmar. The one other thing is if the earthquake starts far away from you and is
08:28coming towards you, there is an initial wave that's not as big and therefore it's called
08:33the P wave, which really is just primary, the first wave. And then there's a second
08:37wave, the S wave that is bigger. So you might feel the P wave and then experience the S
08:43wave. But it has to start far away from you. And in the case of Mandalay, the beginning
08:48of this rupture was actually the epicenter was was practically under the city of Mandalay.
08:52So they would have it would have just been sudden. There would have been no warning at
08:56all. They could have set it up in Bangkok, but I don't believe that they did because
09:01they haven't seen it as being a big issue for them.
09:04Because Bangkok is so relatively far from those fault lines.
09:08Yeah. One thing that's really surprising is the end of the rupture. So the closest approach
09:13of this earthquake to Bangkok is almost 600 kilometers. And then they still collapsed
09:18the building. Now, it was still under construction. So maybe they didn't have everything in there.
09:25I am sure in Bangkok that the code would require more strength to withstand wind. The wind
09:32forces would be a bigger issue than seismic forces. But presumably there's a building
09:36code for wind forces. And I'm still quite shocked that a building would fall down that
09:43far away. I think it's something we need to look at here in California, because part of
09:49the reason is the by the time the motion gets that far away, it's a very slow motion. It's
09:54very long period. And for a small building, then it's just going to ride on top of it
10:00like a little boat on top of big, slow waves. But a really big, tall building will respond.
10:07It has a resonant frequency. And just like a bow or something, it'll start resonating
10:12with that frequency. And that might be part of what happened there was amplification of
10:18these really long period waves that strongly affected the really tall buildings. And that's
10:23an issue we could get here in California, especially here in Los Angeles. We're sitting
10:27in a basin, and we get that type of amplification. Because the soil is relatively soft.
10:35Now, when you talk about building codes, obviously, in the US, we have all sorts of
10:39regulations and rules that construction workers and manufacturers must follow. If
10:46Mandalay is sitting right on top of a fault, I wonder, why? Why will the destruction be so
10:53bad? Why aren't there better codes in place there? Is that something we can answer?
10:59I think that's a political question, right? And it's a country that's been in civil war
11:04for so long. And it's one thing to say, we have a code. It's another thing to enforce
11:09it. And even here in California, it's clearly an issue that there have been corruption
11:15cases. There's, you know, what did the inspector actually see? When we have continuous
11:22inspection, which is what happens with our public schools, we get better performance
11:26than we do in regular buildings. So having a code doesn't get you anything, you have
11:31to enforce them.
11:33And what you said about code here in the United States is that it still allows for some
11:39buildings to fall. So what are you advocating for change in the law or what needs to
11:45happen?
11:47Here in California, there's a movement by the engineers and other professionals to try
11:51and increase our building code from life safety only to what we call functional
11:57recovery, which means you can recover the function of the building. It's repairable.
12:01The estimates are that at most it will add about 1% to the cost of construction and will
12:08save us $4 for every dollar extra we spend in that extra construction. So it's cost
12:12effective. It's a really big deal about viability of our societies. But we haven't
12:19had a big earthquake in long enough that it's hard to get the emotional impact of
12:24getting it done.
12:27I wonder, obviously, wildfires are different than earthquakes. But if the disasters from
12:34earlier this year, if that would move the needle at all, or even that wouldn't?
12:39I think it will, at least here in Southern California. I mean, I live in Pasadena, I'm
12:44two miles from the burn zone. So we feel it so very, very directly and see what it's
12:50doing to our community. And building codes affect your fire risk, too. And one of the
12:56problems we had is that most of the homes in the area that burned were pre-1975. And
13:03the 2008 building code is incredible about fire safety. And it's thought that if, you
13:10know, buildings had built to that standard, we would have had much, much less damage.
13:14And then you have less, you know, the whole thing propagates with fires. So I'm hoping
13:19that we can get a new discussion about disasters. Earthquakes are just one of them, right? The
13:26meteorologic disasters, the fires and the hurricanes are increasing because of climate
13:31change. So our current approach to disasters is, oh, who could have thought, oh, let's
13:37throw all this money at recovery, isn't going to work when the disasters come too often.
13:42And we know it is so much more cost effective to prevent losses rather than respond. Big
13:50picture estimates, $8 saved for every, it costs $8 more to do it as response than as
13:56prevention. And as the disasters become more common, we're going to have to take that
14:04into account. We can't afford to go through recovery like this again and again and again.
14:09And I think we're seeing it in Los Angeles right now. Will that message carry to everyone
14:14else? You may not have our wildfire risk, though much of the West does, but there's hurricanes
14:21and there's floods. Look at North Carolina. I mean, we're all facing an increased risk
14:26and we could be much more cost effective in how we manage them if we look towards
14:31prevention instead of response. We're all facing increased risk and that's across all sorts of
14:38natural disasters. But I have to ask, when it comes to earthquakes, as you look at the United
14:44States, is it really just the West Coast that's at risk or are there any fault lines that cross
14:49under those of us in the East or Midwest or South? Right. We have a greater risk in the West.
14:56But, you know, the USGS and FEMA a couple decades ago took everything we knew about all our faults,
15:03looked at what was likely to happen and came up with the estimated annualized expected losses
15:09from earthquakes. And Los Angeles, Southern California is number one because we have 20
15:16million people and 200 faults. San Francisco's number two. Seattle's number three. But number
15:23four is New York. And there's so many people with such bad buildings. And yes, there are faults.
15:30New England has a, it's a much lower level than California, but it has magnitude fives, magnitude
15:37sixes every century or so. Right. There was just that 5.7 down in Virginia. And that was in one of
15:44the USGS hotspots for the region. And in the Midwest, there's the really big system. It's
15:50called New Madrid seismic zone that produced magnitude sevens in 1811, 1812. So we know that
15:57we have quite a high risk there. There's very few states in the United States that do not have a
16:03significant earthquake risk. And the ones that used to be really low, some of them are adding it
16:08because of oil exploration and fracking has increased the seismic risk in places like Texas
16:14and Colorado and North Dakota used to never have any earthquakes at all. Probably Florida is the
16:20only place without earthquakes and it gets hurricanes. Well, that's terrifying. So as an
16:26individual who lives in a building built in 1920 in New York City, I have to ask, is there anything
16:32individual people can do to protect themselves against an earthquake? I know you've developed
16:37some drills, or is it really just lobbying our elected officials and hoping that codes continue
16:44to improve upon the existing infrastructure? Well, code should continue to improve. Getting
16:52retrofitting of buildings is very, very effective. Now here in California, it's been considered
16:57worthwhile to require these. It's a local jurisdictional issue, but many communities
17:02of Southern California, both Bay Area and Southern California are requiring retrofit of some of the
17:07known worst buildings. But as an individual, you can always ask for a foundation specialist to come
17:13in and look at your building and see what you could do to be stronger. And I've done it every
17:18time I bought a house in California, I would do it buying a house anywhere. And then there's also
17:24being ready to respond. And so the drills are really about if you haven't done anything else,
17:30what are you going to do when things come apart? And probably the biggest issue actually we see is
17:35communication. What are you going to do if your cell phone doesn't work and you don't know where
17:39your kids are? And that's probably the situation right after an earthquake. And you know, we aren't
17:46used to not being in contact. So having family communication plans is huge. And we also discover
17:52that when people go through the process of creating that, then they start thinking about
17:56some of the other things. And the other part I'd say, I sometimes tell people, they ask me about
18:01getting an earthquake kit, you know, a go bag or whatever. And I'll end up saying, forget the kit,
18:07talk to your neighbors. Because the communities that recover from disasters are ones that have a
18:14high level of what the social scientists call social capital, where people are connected to
18:19each other, and they're to help. And so one of the big programs we're undertaking here in Southern
18:24California right now is trying to develop more community resilience, have resilience hubs,
18:30have processes by which people talk to each other and help each other and plan together.
18:34Because that's going to be the thing that really gets us through it. And it's what we're seeing.
18:39I'd say here that, you know, there were two big fires in Los Angeles, I'm near the Eaton fire,
18:44and the east side of town. The degree of the community coming together and helping each other
18:49has been really encouraging. I would have said Californians don't do neighborhood very well,
18:55right? We drive past everybody else. In fact, we are doing neighborhood really well. And I'm
19:00grateful for that. And I think it's going to help us come back.
19:03Well, that is a note of optimism to end on. Dr. Lucy Jones, seismologist, thank you so
19:09much for coming on and explaining all of this to us. We really appreciate your insight.
19:14Well, thank you for having me. Enjoyed.