HLS 501 Discussion Forum: The Earthquakes and Tsunami

HLS 501 DISCUSSION FORUM 2
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Introduction
Earthquakes and tsunamis are a major source of threat to people and infrastructure in the United States. Particularly, these disasters wreak real havoc on the infrastructure of the specific states they occur in. Statistics from the United States Geological Survey and the United States National Seismic Hazard Map (Synolakis et al., 1997) clearly show that the western parts of the country are prone to dangerous earthquakes as well as tsunamis. The most affected areas in the western parts are the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California (Borrero, Legg, & Synolakis, 2004). This paper seeks to identify two major cities in the western coastal belt that are majorly prone to these disasters. It also seeks to identify infrastructural vulnerabilities present in these cities that highly expose them to huge damages and economic losses (Borrero et al., 2003).
Sufficient evidence form researchers point to infrastructural vulnerabilities in most western coastal cities as the main concern. This is true considering the ranking of the region as a high risk earthquake and tsunami area (Borrero et al., 2005). Two cities that fall within this region are San Francisco and Los Angeles. These cities have been identified as the most infrastructure-vulnerable cities in the western coastal area. Moreover, the cities lie within a risky fault on the earth’s crust referred to as the San Andreas Fault line (Uslu et al., 2007). The fault extends to the San Francisco Bay Area, which is also another risky zone. Statistics indicate that both cities experience an ever growing list of challenges to their infrastructure. The challenges are mainly due to lack of enough fede...