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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. 

The Red Spot

The 2008 financial crisis was one of the biggest shifts of wealth away from the Black community.

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Andreas_Rebmann
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It has been cited 5 times, in three papers (The World Trade Center Analyses: Case Study of Ethics, Public Policy and the Engineering Profession; Engineering Risk and Disaster: Disaster-STS and the American History of technology; Making Sense of Disaster) and two books (Expanding the Criminological Imagination: Critical Readings in Crimonology; The Martians Have Landed!: A history of Media-Driven Panics and Hoaxes).

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Andreas_Rebmann
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"(Survivors) told us that they were experiencing ongoing “displacement” in the sense that their lives had not returned to normal, even though they were back in their “place of residence.”

"Depression and anxiety disorders were pervasive. Many residents had regular nightmares of waking up in water. They talked about recurring “breakdowns” in which they became overcome with emotion and physically collapsed. A 2007 study showed that 20 percent of New Orleans residents were categorized as having a Katrina-related serious mental illness, and 19 percent showed signs of minimal to mild mental illness (Sastry and VanLandingham 2008; Thomas 2008)."

"Margot, an elderly woman still living in a FEMA trailer next to her destroyed and as yet unrebuilt home, described the problem: '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.' "