AP: More quakes lately? Not really. Just more cities, some with crummy buildings, getting hit
The AP‘s Seth Borenstein does a solid job of producing a long story today, about earthquakes and the public’s perception of them. He could have tossed off a shorty and gotten himself off the hook with editors eager for this sort of inevitable story. A question arises after any spate of bad weather, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, or other natural hazard. Is this abnormal? Is god or fate angry with us? At least underground nuclear tests have faded, for the most part, into history. Those used to generate serious public hypotheses pinning on them the finger of blame for quakes – but essentially never inspired certified experts to endorse the suspicion. Writing on that got to be a deep pain.
Borenstein not only gathers up enough stats, and explains them clearly, to convince almost anybody that, tectonically, the Earth is up to no particular mischief. He also, more enterprisingly, gets examples of what is also true: it seems worse because so many cities have grown so fast in recent years, often near faults and often with people crowded into tall, badly-designed and shoddily-made buildings. Then when they fall down the 24 hour news cycle means the injuries, death, and destruction get replayed many times.
A problem for Borenstein as a beat writer is that, in a year or a few years, he’ll be again given this same assignment. He will not be able merely to re-run this one. So he’ll have to make the calls, take the notes, write the same old same old …. unless he can get some new member of the staff to do it for the first time and make it seem fresh.
Related News:
- The Washington Post carries on line today a transcript of a public call-in to a US Geological Survey seismologist.
- Charlie Petit
