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Seismic St. Louis

Emily Sekine
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I'm interested in better understanding the ongoing geological processes that shape St. Louis and the Mississippi Valley region. So far, I've been looking into the history of seismicity in the region, focusing on the fascinating but little known history of the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811 and 1812 -- the most devastating earthquakes to have hit the US east of the Rockies. I've also been exploring how St. Louis and surrounding areas are dealing with the possibility of another earthquake occurring in the future. According to one article I read, one of the biggest uncertainties is what would happen to the heavily engineered Mississippi River in the case of another major tremblor. The shaking could break the levees, flooding wide areas along the river and creating cascading effects. The flow of the river might also reverse completely, as occurred during the New Madrid earthquakes.

On these possibilities and the lack of scientific consensus surrounding intraplate seismicity in this zone, see this article in The Atlantic.

On current efforts to create earthquake hazard maps in St. Louis, see this overview on the US Geological Survey site.

For a deeper dive into the history of the New Madrid earthquakes, see this book by historian of science Conevery Bolton Valencius. 

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erin_tuttle
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  • I looked at current French visa laws which allow for a number of humanitarian requests, including family, fear of life, and medical treatment. The current protocols do still allow for easily obtainable short stay medical visas which require the medical report from a French doctor, the long term visas have a similar application but are more challenging to obtain.
  • I also researched which countries have significant numbers of tourists traveling for medical reasons, the countries in Europe, Northern America, and Asia have the most applications for medical stays in order to access otherwise unavailable treatment. There is also however significant travel to countries with less developed health infrastructure and regulation for inexpensive treatment.
  • Finally, as this article focused only on the normal application process of immigrants I looked into how the humanitarian allowances for residence in France was effected during the recent increase in refugees traveling through Europe. France is actually planning to close some refugee camps against the arguments of humanitarian groups due to strain on resources, while the government wishes to find alternative locations for the refugees they claim the camp in Calais will be closed by winter regardless.

Source: The Guardian sept. 26th 2016 edition

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maryclare.crochiere
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"Two FDNY EMTs who had to intervene to stop four police officers beating a handcuffed patient on a stretcher have turned the cops in to authorities"

""Three cops began to punch the patient in the face, EMS (had) to get in the middle of it to intervene. Pt's. wounds and injuries cleaned in the (ambulance)," the report said."

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maryclare.crochiere
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The Partners in Health are working on expanding surgery centers across the world, as described on their website: "'Essential surgical procedures rank among the most cost-effective of all health interventions,' finds the World Bank.". They have surgical centers, clinics, and other facilities for healthcare, but also help to better all of the infrastructure in the communities they aid, to reduce the spread of diseases.

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erin_tuttle
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  • “The response to the disaster was recognized as a bureaucratic nightmare that, regardless of the intent of the federal and state governments, appeared to homeowners as a sign of their having been abandoned.” (16)
  • “And the patterns with the family too. A family is—for as close as we—were and I mean every birthday, with a big family… And now, it’s the closeness that’s all gone. And it’s not just the distance. You can blame it on the distance, use the distance as an excuse. But even when we get together, nobody wants to stay. Everyone wants to get home.” (12)
  • “I haven’t had a mail box in three years, OK. I mean symbolically that’s it right now. I don’t even have a mailbox. You know, if you want to put it in one sentence. I am just tired of not having a mailbox, ya know, because I don’t know where I live.” (9)

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maryclare.crochiere
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I looked up the rates of hospital bankruptcy/closing, the results looked to be interesting. The article (http://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/hospital-bankruptcies-result-…) makes it seem avoidable, if the warnings are taken seriously in the years leading up to the crisis. "What they found was that filing hospitals tended to be smaller, not part of a health system and were more likely to be in the Northeast or West Coast. Many factors were involved, including poor financial management, changes in payer mix, reimbursement reductions, overzealous construction and purchasing of physician practices, decrease in volume and demographic shifts that were the impetus for filing."

I also looked up ER wait time statistics, by state, over the course of several years, etc. (https://projects.propublica.org/emergency/) Very interesting!