Not long ago Dr. T.A. Jaggar, director of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, published in a widely circulated magazine a startling account of the destruction of New York City by an earthquake in the year 1932. The death list in this imaginary disaster numbered nine hundred thousand and the property loss was a little matter of fifty billion dollars. Such details as the suffocation of three hundred thousand people in the subways when the ventilating system broke down inay have disturbed the slumbers of a good many readers who will never experience an earthquake in their lives; yet the publication of the story was amply justified.
Yes, the world badly needs to be scared out of its present apathy on the subject of earthquakes. New York will probably never undergo a catastrophe like the one described. Nevertheless, such an event is not impossible, and now, rather than after it happens, is the time to do something about it. There is no cure for earthquakes, but there are known ways of mitigating, or even nullifying, their disastrous effects. In this respect, earthquakes are much like certain atmospheric visitations, such as storms, floods and cold waves. They cannot be prevented, but mankind can be protected against them.
Earthquakes are extremely common. In the year 1903 the late F. de Montessus de Ballore published a catalogue of nearly 160,000 quakes known to have occurred since the dawn of history. The number of unrecorded quakes during the same period must have been vastly greater. Recent statistics show that about 4,000 earthquakes perceptible to human senses occur in the world every year. More than ten times as many are registered by delicate instruments. Though the majority of quakes are too feeble to do any harm, there are records of 4,151 destructive earthquakes between the years 7 and 1899 of the Christian era. Of these 423, or more than four a year, occurred during the Nineteenth Century.
The number of destructive earthquakes is steadily increasing; not because the shocks themselves are more frequent or severe, but because of the increased density of population and especially because of the increase of structures liable to earthquake damage. Our modern cities, with their tall buildings, their fire hazards, and their dependence for fire protection upon a vulnerable system of water mains, are potential sites of earthquake disasters such as would have been impossible anywhere in the world a century ago.
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