 |
  |
MISSOURI DIVISION |
|
 |
 |
PROCEEDINGS OF THE SEPTEMBER 2000 POST EARTHQUAKE HIGHWAY RESPONSE AND RECOVERY SEMINAR HELD IN ST. LOUIS MISSOURI
OPENING REMARKS BY ALAN MASUDA
MISSOURI WELCOME BY HENRY HUNGERBEELER
OPENING REMARKS
Good morning -- I'm glad you're all talking because we really need to do that before a really bad disaster.
I am Allen Masuda, the Division Administrator for the Missouri office of the Federal Highway Administration. I am the moderator for the first session. I would like to welcome all of you to St. Louis and to this important business. I would also give special thanks to Don Neumann of my staff and Dave Musser of the MoDOT staff. These guys have been working hard to get it all together: the program and working with the hotel getting all the facilities ready for you.
These sessions will be recorded and transcribed and we will be producing proceedings of all the presentations and if you're a registered participant you will be getting a copy.
Bob Moseley asked me to make an announcement that the EMAC group, which is a group of 35 states that have agreed in times of disaster to help each other get all the details squared away as far as state employees, state equipment and materials going to another state. He asked for volunteers to be on the five panels, in the EMAC. What they're looking for are non-state DOT representatives. The five panels that they have are signs, signals, debris removal, inspection of structures and operations. Anybody from Federal Highway Administration that would like to volunteer for these panels, see me. I´ll coordinate the Federal Highway interests in these panels, and basically they meet less than once a year. Their business is very important.
Why are we here? For Mid-America, we´re looking at the New Madrid and the Wabash seismic zones that can affect our transportation systems and our communities. A major earthquake can create a transportation hole within Mid-America. What does that mean? I think over the course of the next two and a half days, we'll find out. We´ll be talking about many aspects of highway response and recovery after a major disaster.
Back in 1811 and 1812, this area had earthquakes in the magnitude of 8 plus on the Richter scale. What would happen today in Memphis and St. Louis if this occurred today? We will be talking about the local, state and federal responses needed to coordinate all of our efforts, including our resources so we're not competing with one another to get to the same objective. That´s why it's important for us to talk ahead of time and plan. When a major earthquake happens in Mid-America, it will shut down the United States, essentially. Our suppliers such as steel and cement plants will not be able to produce materials to get our structures back in place as quickly as we would like.
What are the differences between earthquakes and other disasters? We have speakers from hurricane prone areas. You will notice, a lot of what they say applies to any disaster whether it´s a hurricane, a flood, or an earthquake.
Let me give you some dates and numbers here from the past century: 1923 Tokyo and Yokahama, Japan, 8.3, 200,000 dead; 1920, Gansu, China, 8.6, 100,000 dead; 1970, Northern Peru, 7.7, 70,000 dead; 1976, Tangshan, China, recordings up to 8.2, 240,000 dead.
If you can imagine the transportation system in relationship to these disasters: people walking. That's what we're going to have to deal with if we have a major earthquake of similar magnitudes.
What I would like to do is turn this over to Henry Hungerbeeler, who's the Director of MoDOT. He retired from the United States Air Force after a 30-year career, at the rank of Colonel. He was the base commander for both Andrews Air Force base and Charleston Air Force base and provided security for U. S. Presidents and other Heads of State. He advised the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Gulf Persian War, flew combat missions over Vietnam, and graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in engineering management and microeconomics. He's a native of Shreveport, Louisiana.
MISSOURI WELCOME
Thank you. You know, in the early morning hours of December 16, 1811, people were literally shaken out of their beds all around this area. There was a magnitude 8.0 plus earthquake. In the months that followed there were two more 8.0 type earthquakes and thousands of aftershocks. The effects of this earthquake were felt as far away as Washington D.C. and other places on the east coast. I'm sure it was felt to the west as well, but there were not as many people living to the west of us so they were not reported. The effects were devastating. Bells were ringing on churches in Washington D.C. that were caused by the earthquake here in the New Madrid seismic zone; certainly devastating, not as well reported as modern day earthquakes, but perhaps the most destructive earthquake that we have had in this country at least in modern times.
Near the epicenter of the earthquake it is reported river banks collapsed, trees were uprooted, houses collapsed, the Missouri River even ran upstream for a time. That is hard for us to imagine today, especially when you realize that the Missouri River in those days was a far different river from what it is now.
The area back then was very sparsely populated. In 1808 New Madrid was a thriving river community and they had over 100 families there, 100 homes. St. Louis was a small fur-trading outpost. After the earthquakes, we don't have an immediate count, but we do know that in 1817 there were only 20 homes in New Madrid, and of the original 100 families, only two remained.
Any of us can estimate the number of fatalities, the number of injuries or the amount of destruction, but as Allen said, it would be
enormous. Not only do we have major surface transportation features running through this area that would have an impact on the entire country, we have three of the four major pipelines that supply the eastern and northeastern part of the country that run through this area. Certainly they could be destroyed. So the effect on the country would be enormous.
Allen also mentioned that my background was in the Air Force. As a base commander, some of the more interesting things I thought that I had responsibilities for were being prepared for disasters. Of course, we usually looked at something of a smaller nature. We were concerned about airplane crashes, perhaps a hurricane, something of that nature, nothing of the magnitude of a New Madrid type earthquake. Certainly billions of dollars in damage would be expected.
That's why I'm so happy to see this number of experts here for this conference this week. I think that we will all benefit tremendously from hearing from one another. I know in my short experience with the Missouri DOT, I've been to several things involving preparation for earthquakes in the way of design and other things, seismic retrofit of some of our bridges very close to this hotel.
I'm not aware of any large conference that we've had on recovering from the effects of an earthquake, so it's very gratifying to see all of you here. I know we have several representatives from the California Department of Transportation and they have regrettably had more experience with this than anyone else in the country. We have several people from the Federal Highway Administration. We're pleased to have them here. We also have representatives of the military, Red Cross, even the news media, so all of these people will have things that are very valuable for all of us to know.
Things of this nature don't come together by themselves. The work that's been done by Don Neumann and Dave Musser and many others as well is going to be for all of our benefit over the next few days. I really appreciate their efforts. I hope you enjoy your stay in St. Louis.
 |
Send mail to scott.holder@fhwa.dot.gov with questions or comments about this web site. |
