New Study Says New York City Is At Risk For A Massive Earthquake

The study published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, says that the New York City area is at "substantially greater" risk of earthquakes than previously thought, scientists said Thursday.

Damage could range from minor to major, with a rare but potentially powerful event killing people and costing billions of dollars in damage.

A pattern of subtle but active faults is known to exist in the region, and now new faults have been found. The scientists say that among other things, the Indian Point nuclear power plants, 24 miles north of the city, sit astride the previously unidentified intersection of two active seismic zones.

Earthquakes are rare on the East Coast, but they have happened. In 1737, a 5.0 earthquake crumbled chimneys in New York City and the tremors were felt all the way from Boston to Philadelphia, according to LiveScience.com. Less than 50 years later, another quake hit the region, the Web site reported. Then in 1884, a 5.5 earthquake wreaked havoc similar to that caused by the 1737 quake, although the 19th century one affected a wider region.

Researchers said earthquakes of at least 5.0 in magnitude should occur every 100 years, based on their study of 383 earthquakes dating from 1677 to 2007 in a 15,000-square-mile area around New York City and 34 years of new tremblor data, LiveScience.com said.

Despite the infrequency of quakes on the East Coast, the amount and concentration of people and infrastructure make it a particularly risky situation -- one the New York City Area Consortium for Earthquake Loss Mitigation said could cost anywhere from $39 billion to $197 billion, according to LiveScience.

"Today, with so many more buildings and people, a magnitude 5 centered below the city would be extremely attention-getting," John Armbruster, of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, told LiveScience.com. "We'd see billions in damage, with some brick buildings falling. People would probably be killed."

It's possible even magnitude-6 or 7 quakes could strike the area, which could cause 10 to 100 times the damage of a magnitude-5.0, researchers said. A key concern is that earthquakes on the East Coast can't be seen at the surface, which means it could hit from a fault no one knew about.

New Faults have been found near the Indian Point nuclear power plant less than 25 miles north of NYC.

Source 1
Source 2
Source 3

New York State Emergency Radio Network Fails Tests

A $2 billion effort to build a radio network that would connect emergency personnel across New York State has repeatedly performed so poorly in tests that the state should consider dropping the current contractor, the state comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, said on Thursday with the release of an audit his office conducted.

M/A-COM, the subsidiary of Tyco Electronics that the state hired in 2005 to build the network, must fix the problems or face losing its contract without receiving any money, Mr. DiNapoli said. The state has committed to making that call by the end of next week, he said.

“New York is not much closer to a statewide network today than it was when this whole process started,” Mr. DiNapoli said in a statement. “After three rounds of failed testing, it is apparent that this system is not ready to move forward.”

Early planning on the project, the Statewide Wireless Network, began more than a decade ago within the Division of State Police, but the inability of first responders to communicate with one another during the World Trade Center attack on Sept. 11, 2001, intensified interest.

Thousands of police, fire and medical workers cannot use the state’s current system, and large areas of the state are unreachable.

Tests last September on the project’s first phase of installation found that words could not be understood and that communications between relay towers were too often lost. Those problems recurred during retests in April and July, the audit said.

The State Office for Technology, which is overseeing the project, has not yet released the results of the July test. A spokesman for the office said it welcomed the audit findings.

“M/A-COM has an opportunity to remediate existing issues, and we are hopeful they will be able to make the appropriate fixes so we can move forward with the project,” said the spokesman, Rob Roddy. “The state will make a decision whether to continue with the project in its current format in the weeks ahead.”

For more on this story please visit the source: The New York Times