Skip to main content

Search

Seismic St. Louis

Emily Sekine

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. 

pece_annotation_1478463979

a_chen

This might not receive well enough by the public, as the search results for this policy are main on the government’s website, not as the reference from articles. Even though this policy is not well informed to the public, but in recent days, the general publics do gain much more awareness on water (environmental) contamination.

pece_annotation_1473038007

a_chen

Convention on Early Notification of a Nuclear Accident.  The convention is aimed to take a high level safety in any nuclear activities to prevent accidents  or in the case of the accident happened, minimizing the consequences of the nuclear effects.  Furthermore, the convention is encouraging countries (state) that undertaking the nuclear  activities can exchange information on the accidents in order to gained an internationally  cooperation on nuclear safeties.

pece_annotation_1474235887

a_chen
  1. With the lack of understanding of new disease (in this case, Ebola for the villagers), the trust crisis is easily raised up between publics and aid workers due to the fear of unknown things.
  2. The number of death been announced can violate the faith that publics put into the aid workers. Acts of violence are the fears from the publics.
  3. There is a lack of medical education in the area like Western African, Ebola has been there for three times since 1970s, and the publics still not having the correct perception on the disease awareness.

pece_annotation_1474844359

a_chen

The organization does not claim that they have the unique way to address the issue intentionally. Personally think that the OSHA can be reached by educational materials and training institutes are very good for pre-caution to any workplace hazards. They also provided online newsletter on latest news about OSHA to assist both employers and employees.

pece_annotation_1475441807

a_chen
Annotation of

The argument has mainly shown through the discussion and meetings among the MSF members with their personal emotive expression towards the current situations or the decision makings. Other than the group meetings, the interview with each individual MFS member is also expressed emotionally with his/her own thoughts (e.g. ~11:00 Kiara inspected the patient and made a range of assumptions towards the illness, “…this could be a yellow fever”). Scientific information might carry out via their personal medical experience opinions but not specifically noted with any data or text to the audience watches the film. Also their opinion needs to translate to the locals, so the phrases used in that context is also not very scientific which makes everything can be understand by parties easily.