{"id":20490,"date":"2015-08-04T20:18:35","date_gmt":"2015-08-05T03:18:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forallevents.com\/reviews\/?p=20490"},"modified":"2015-08-04T20:18:35","modified_gmt":"2015-08-05T03:18:35","slug":"earthquake-storms-book-review-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forallevents.com\/reviews\/earthquake-storms-book-review-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Earthquake Storms — Book Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earthquake Storms:\u00a0 The Fascinating History and Volatile Future of the San Andreas Fault<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 By John Dvorak.\u00a0 New York:\u00a0 Pegasus Books.\u00a0 2014.<\/p>\n

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Earthquake Storms <\/em>is indeed a fascinating history, not only of the San Andreas Fault that runs along the western edge of California, but also of the State of California itself, the cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles, the building of the Golden Gate Bridge, the California Gold Rush, the development of the oil industry in California, the growth of the science of geology, the increasing understanding of earthquakes, the development of the Richter scale, the Trojan War, paleoseismology, as well as the future of the San Andreas Fault and the prospects of predicting earthquakes, in addition to many other interesting side roads.\u00a0 The book is well written, well researched and has depth as well as breadth.\u00a0 It is a stimulating panorama that includes colorful depictions of the personalities whose curiosity and dogged persistence made the breakthroughs that moved our understanding of earthquakes forward.\u00a0\u00a0 Dvorak makes interesting connections between personal peculiarities and psychological needs of individuals and the influence it had on their work as a researchers and scientists.<\/p>\n

Until the latter half of the twentieth century earthquakes were mysterious, apparently random events, that could be enormously destructive.\u00a0 But people had no clue why they occurred when and where they did and what caused them.\u00a0 The destructive potential of earthquakes has grown with the growth of civilization and the construction of large cities on or near the faults in the earth where earthquakes occur, and this in turn has stimulated the study of earthquakes and their causes.\u00a0 Earthquake Storms documents this growing interest and understanding of earthquakes beginning in the nineteenth century with dramatic strides forward in the twentieth.\u00a0 However, this understanding has not reached a point where earthquakes can be foreseen with the kind of accuracy that has come to forecasting the weather.\u00a0 Dvorak cites a 2008 report by the Working Group on California Earthquake Probabilities that asserts a 31% probability of a magnitude 6.8 or stronger quake along the Hayward Fault, which runs along the eastern side of San Francisco Bay from Richmond, through Berkeley, Oakland, Hayward and Fremont, within the next thirty years. (p. 235)\u00a0 Not exactly something you can make plans around, but it does emphasize the need to strengthen buildings and infrastructure for the inevitable traumas that will be visited upon them.<\/p>\n

While this book is well thought out, well organized, and coherently written, it does have one major drawback, and that is a dearth of maps, drawings, diagrams, and illustrations that would make some of these concepts and descriptions a lot easier to grasp.\u00a0 Dvorak does include eight pages of black and white photographs that are very interesting and helpful, but the book needs a lot more.\u00a0 I would recommend another fifty pages of maps and illustrations.\u00a0 I’ll give you an example.<\/p>\n

When the North American plate began to drift over the Farallon-Pacific’s spreading central region, a transform fault formed, and then a peculiar feature developed at either end of that fault.\u00a0 The feature, known as a triple junction, is a place where the boundaries of three tectonic plates meet.\u00a0 In this case, two of the plates are the North American and Pacific plates; the third, which is actually what remains of the Farallon plate, has been given a different name depending on whether it is north or south of the transform fault.\u00a0 At the north end, the surviving part of the Farallon plate is now known as the Gorda plate and the point where the three plates meet is the Mendocino triple junction, because the point is currently located near Cape Mendocino.\u00a0 At the south end is the Cocos plate — a remnant of the Farallon plate — and the Rivera triple junction.\u00a0 What is important here is that, because of the directions in which the various plates are moving, neither the Mendocino nor the Rivera triple junction is stationary; both migrate.\u00a0 And they migrate in opposite directions, the Mendocino triple junction to the north and the Rivera to the south.\u00a0 As time progresses, the transform boundary between the Pacific and North American plates lengthens.\u00a0 And that brings us back to the San Francisquito-Fenner-Clemens Well Fault.\u00a0 (p. 211)<\/p>\n

Can you visualize that all right?\u00a0 Maybe you don’t really need a map.\u00a0 It should be no problem to anyone who is steeped in the geology and geography of California.\u00a0\u00a0 But how many people would that be?\u00a0 This book is written, supposedly, for a wide audience.\u00a0 \u00a0But doesn’t Dvorak know that Americans are among the most geographically illiterate people in the developed world?\u00a0 According to National Geographic and Roper surveys:<\/p>\n

About 11 percent of young citizens of the U.S. couldn’t even locate the U.S. on a map.\u00a0 The Pacific Ocean’s location was a mystery to 29 percent; Japan, to 58 percent; France, to 65 percent; and the United Kingdom, to 69 percent.1<\/sup><\/p>\n

If people cannot even find the Pacific Ocean on a map, how are they going to visualize the Mendocino and Rivera triple junctions that are moving in opposite directions?\u00a0\u00a0 Dvorak does this all through the book.\u00a0 He is very good at verbal descriptions, but he expects his reader to have encyclopedic knowledge of geography and a vivid imagination for the movements of large objects, how they interact, the stresses they create, and the outcome of these colliding forces that would be worthy of an experienced civil engineer.\u00a0 It may be bad news to the publisher, but his book needs illustrations and photographs on nearly every other page, perhaps another hundred.\u00a0 There are so many things that Dvorak describes very well in words, but they cry out for a picture that would simplify the cumbersome description.<\/p>\n

Another example would be his descriptions of rocks and mineral specimens.<\/p>\n

I draw attention to this particular component of the conglomerate because it is easy to identify.\u00a0 About one out of every ten boulders, cobbles, or pebbles in the conglomerate is this purple rock peppered with pink flecks of feldspar crystals, which adds to its attractiveness and ease of identification.\u00a0 (p. 205)<\/p>\n

A picture would do a much better job of fixing the image of this mineral in the mind, and I think it would also make the point he is trying to get across more accessible as well.\u00a0 In this subject material, which is very visual to begin with, descriptions of the movements of land masses and geographical features almost require pictures and illustrations.\u00a0 He really needs to do a second edition, updated and improved with lots of visual imagery.<\/p>\n

One lesson that you can’t help but take away from this book is that earthquakes are inevitable and the San Andreas fault, as well as many other faults all throughout California, are ticking time bombs that will certainly go off as major seismic events in the foreseeable future, with powerful and terrible effect.\u00a0 The title of the book, Earthquake Storms<\/em>, refers to another realization, first argued for by Amos Nur in the 1990s, that earthquakes tend to occur in clusters, or as Dvorak calls them, storms.\u00a0 Once you have a major earthquake, the chance of having another one of equal or stronger magnitude is actually greater<\/em> \u00a0than it was before the first event.\u00a0\u00a0 He likened a fault’s slippage to the opening of a zipper that catches on successive teeth as it slides down the chain.\u00a0 Amos Nur has suggested that such a series of successive earthquakes over a period of decades may have contributed to the end of the Bronze Age 3300 years ago. (pp. 226-28)\u00a0 Dvorak points out several examples of successive major quakes along fault lines within relatively short spans of time, including along the San Andreas.<\/p>\n

It is also worth mentioning, Kathryn Schulz’s recent, excellent article in the New Yorker<\/em> \u00a0that describes a much more monumental disaster waiting to happen on the Cascadia fault off the Pacific Northwest. \u00a0The Cascadia Fault, has been quiet for over three hundred years, in contrast to the San Andreas, which has been quite active in recent times.\u00a0 In other words, the Cascadia Fault, while not considered overdue in a statistical sense, has been ominously quiet for a very long time, and when it does give way, could prove cataclysmic for the Pacific Northwest.\u00a0 Schulz points out that faults have a maximum magnitude in the strength of earthquake they can produce that is based on the length and width of the fault and the amount that the fault can slip.\u00a0 She does not discuss the science of this in any detail and Dvorak does not mention the earthquake magnitude potential of faults at all.\u00a0 But for the San Andreas Fault, Schulz claims that 8.2 is the maximum magnitude it can generate — which is a pretty good shake that will wreak a lot of havoc.\u00a0 But it pales in comparison to the potential awaiting in the Cascadia Fault off the Pacific Northwest coast.\u00a0\u00a0 If the Cascadia gives way in a really big way the result could be anywhere from 8.0 to 9.2, which would leave much of the Pacific Northwest, which is profoundly unprepared for such an event, in rubble.<\/p>\n

Generally, I would heartily recommend this book, especially to well educated people who live in California.\u00a0 But it could be equally relevant and illuminating for people all around the world who live in earthquake zones were it to be revised and expanded to include illustrations that would make the text much easier to follow and the conceptual arguments easier to visualize.<\/p>\n

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Notes<\/strong><\/p>\n

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1.\u00a0 National Geographic News<\/em>, October 28, 2010.\u00a0\u00a0 http:\/\/news.nationalgeographic.com\/news\/2002\/11\/1120_021120_GeoRoperSurvey.html<\/p>\n

See also the National Geographic\/ Roper study from 2006 on Geographic Literacy.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.nationalgeographic.com\/roper2006\/pdf\/FINALReport2006GeogLitsurvey.pdf<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0 The Really Big One.\u00a0 By Kathryn Schulz.\u00a0 The New Yorker<\/em>, July 20, 2015, pp. 52-59.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earthquake Storms:\u00a0 The Fascinating History and Volatile Future of the San Andreas Fault.\u00a0 By John Dvorak.\u00a0 New York:\u00a0 Pegasus Books.\u00a0 2014.       Earthquake Storms is indeed a fascinating…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"yasr_overall_rating":0,"yasr_post_is_review":"","yasr_auto_insert_disabled":"","yasr_review_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[837],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-20490","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-joe-cillo"},"yasr_visitor_votes":{"stars_attributes":{"read_only":true,"span_bottom":"