From: Andrew Johnson
Date: 2010-09-16 21:28:29
Attachments : #ygrps-yiv-874659770 DIV { MARGIN:0px;} Thanks to Mark G for forwarding this… Super duper stuff… Laugh with me… Notice the they use pictures from the simulation – then a photo from New Zealand…. www.dailymail.co.uk/… Britain is overdue a major earthquake which could kill 100, warns geologist By DAVID DERBYSHIRELast updated at 5:59 PM on 16th September 2010 Comments (89) Add to My Stories Britain is overdue a killer earthquake that could see up to 100 people crushed to death, a leading geologist warned today. Dr Roger Musson of the British Geological Survey believes a fracture in the earth’s crust beneath the English Channel could ‘fail’ at any time, sending a tremor rippling across the South-East. The same fault was to blame for one of Britain’s biggest earthquakes in the last 500 years – a magnitude 6 quake that killed two people in London in 1580. Be prepared: A ‘casualty’ during a simulated earthquake in Merseyside last week. Experts believe Britain is due a large quake which could kill up to 100 people According to Dr Musson, the same scale of earthquake would be 50 times more serious today because the population has grown so much. The earthquake could cause billions of pounds worth of damage to buildings and infrastructure, he said. Last week, there was criticism of a decision by police to spend more than £1million on a three-day training exercise – Project Orion – which simulated what would happen if a massive earthquake hit Britain. A spokesman for the TaxPayers’ Alliance said of the EU-funded exercise: ‘Those police should have been out fighting crime, not working on unlikely or imaginary scenarios.’ Shook up: An elderly woman is escorted from her home in Folkestone through chimney rubble after a magnitude 4.3 earthquake hit the Kent coast in April, 2007 The UK is shaken by hundreds of earthquakes every year, although most are too minor to detect. Although they can occur anywhere, experts are most concerned about faults that have triggered earthquakes before. The 1580 earthquake was a magnitude of 5.5 to 6 on the Richter Scale and caused ‘extensive damage in London’, even though its epicentre was in the Dover Straits, Dr Musson told the British Science Festival. ‘This earthquake could certainly happen again because even the earthquake of 1580 itself was a repeat of a previous earthquake that occurred in 1382 with almost the same epicentre, almost the same size and almost the same results.’ Since 1580 the population of London has gone up 50 times, he said. More… Major ‘earthquake’ hits a small British town! Emergency services recreate massive disaster scene for training exercise If two people were killed in London then, you can imagine yourself what sort of scaling up that would be for a contemporary earthquake of the same size, Dr Musson said. ‘While that might not be a high death toll in world records, it would certainly be a nasty shock in terms of Britains experience of earthquakes. Fault line: A damaged road from the earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand earlier this month It is impossible to predict when the next one will hit the UK. He added: ‘In terms of saying when is the next one going to be, all we can say is something that has happened twice can and probably will happen three times. ‘But as to whether it happens tomorrow, or in two years’ time or in 20 years or 50 years’ time, that is something we would love to know but we dont.’ A magnitude 5.5 or 6 quake is unlikely to demolish buildings, but will topple chimneys and ornaments on older, poorly repaired homes. ‘It may not sound very dramatic compared to buildings collapsing, but if people are walking on the street and a chimney falls on you it’s bad news, he said. London and homes in the Thames valley are particularly vulnerable because they are built on soft clay which moves more in a quake than hard rock. The epicentre of the Dover Straits hotspot is 10 miles below the surface of the sea bed and lies on of the faults in the earth’s crust that riddle Europe. The faults release tension that builds up when Europe’s tectonic plate is pushed from the south by the plate under Africa. The last noticeable earthquake in the UK shook Cumbria in April 2009. It was 3.7 on the Richter Scale. Geologists expect a magnitude 4.5 quake capable of shaking ornaments at least once a decade. A moderate 5.5 earthquake capable of causing major damage to badly constructed buildings – takes place every century on average.Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1312608/Britain-overdue-killer-earthquake-warns-geologist.html#ixzz0zj4tBpQQ
