Is Boston doomed?

Part 5

by Michael Crowley

In perhaps the ultimate expression of Northeastern elitism, I used to take a secret pride in New England's relative immunity to natural disaster. Sure, from time to time we're nailed by a wicked hurricane, but the really bad stuff hits elsewhere. The Midwest gets the tornadoes; the West Coast gets the earthquakes. Somehow it seemed appropriate.

But it's not quite true. Medium-sized quakes hit New England every 30 to 50 years (the last one was in New Hampshire in 1940). Says geologist John Smith of the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency (MEMA): "You talk to the guy on the street about earthquakes, and he laughs at you. He says, `They only have those out in California.' "

But at least three severe quakes have been recorded in our area. The most recent was a 1775 shaking of Cape Ann somewhere above six on the Richter scale. (That's big -- about the size of the 1989 earthquake near San Francisco which, despite the Bay Area's careful preparations, touched off raging fires and knocked down an expressway.) Geologists think such a quake can be expected every 300 years or so, which means we're due for an encore.

An earthquake that large is bad news for any city, but, according to Boston College geologist John Ebel, Boston is especially vulnerable to a big shake. The amount of damage caused by an earthquake depends on what kind of ground is moving, and on the strength of the shaking buildings.

Sadly, Boston loses big on both counts. First, much of the city is built on landfill, which in an earthquake can shake with up to three times the force of bedrock. Which makes it that much easier for all those old brick and cinderblock buildings that give our town such charm to be flattened when the Big One hits.

The good news is that highway and subway tunnels tend to shake with the ground, and are thus unlikely to collapse. Ditto for new highrises such as the Prudential Center, which have to be built to withstand the stresses of a stiff nor'easter.

According to a 1990 report, a rough estimate of the impact of a major quake in Boston suggested damages of $4 billion to $5 billion. Ten thousand people would be injured, and perhaps 300 to 500 killed.

Obviously, there's not much we can do to gird ourselves against an earthquake. Especially since, as Ebel says, "There's going to be no warning."

But are we any more helpless against a cataclysmic act of nature than we are against the new face of terrorism?

Part 6

Michael Crowley can be reached at mcrowley[a]phx.com.