Memphis planners start worrying about the next big quake

MEMPHIS — Scenes of looters rampaging through the flooded streets of New Orleans while homeless survivors of Hurricane Katrina begged for food and water stirred emotions across the country.

For disaster relief planners up the Mississippi River in Memphis, it prompted a question: Could that happen here?

Memphis is the largest city closest to one of the most active earthquake faults in the United States, and scientists have warned for years that a powerful quake could hit at any time.

But emergency plans for a major quake are still incomplete in Memphis. No one knows for sure how many people might have to evacuate, where they would go or how much food and water they might need right away.

The fury Hurricane Katrina unleashed on the Gulf Coast and the slow government response have added new urgency to emergency planning near the New Madrid Fault, a deep network of fissures in the earth’s crust running from southern Illinois to northern Arkansas.

Everyone knew Hurricane Katrina was headed for the Gulf Coast, but thousands of people were still trapped by the storm and flooding. It could be even worse in Memphis because no one can predict when an earthquake will hit.

“New Orleans had four or five days notice and we see what happened there,” Shelby County Mayor A C Wharton said.

Wharton is among a growing list of officials, including Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, who are calling for more disaster preparedness in the New Madrid region. Tennessee Sens. Bill Frist and Lamar Alexander and Rep. Harold Ford Jr. of Memphis are seeking more federal money for disaster planning in the New Madrid Seismic Zone.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, emergency agencies have worked on various disaster plans for the Memphis region, but with no special focus on earthquakes and little overall coordination.

“It’s basically been talks in general terms,” said Ted Fox, the city’s public works director. “What we’re doing now is putting all those pieces together.”

James Bolden, Homeland Security director for the Memphis region, said the lawlessness that erupted in New Orleans shows that police can’t slack off on law enforcement — even while trying to rescue people.

“If you can’t maintain the law and have order, then certainly it’s chaos for everybody,” said Bolden, a former Memphis police chief.

Claude Talford, director of the Memphis-Shelby County Emergency Management Agency, said a major lesson learned from Katrina is the need for better coordination between local, state and federal agencies. And if federal help is slow in coming?

“We’d be in a pretty tough spot,” Talford said. “You would never have enough shelters to cover the population of Memphis and Shelby County.”

Since Memphis sits on high bluffs above the Mississippi River, the city doesn’t face a serious threat of flooding, though hundreds of square miles of low-lying northeastern Arkansas could be covered by 3 to 4 feet of water. That flooding would primarily come from water forced from underground because of the geological makeup of the region.

Most of the damage in Memphis likely would result from crumbling buildings, including schools and office towers; fires fed by broken gas lines; widespread utility outages and falling bridges. Highways could be impassable.

Memphis is about 35 miles from the New Madrid Fault, which gets its name from New Madrid, Mo., a small town in the heart of the seismic zone.

A series of some of the largest quakes in U.S. history struck the New Madrid zone in 1811 and 1812. No instruments existed then to measure their maximum strength but estimates put it at magnitude 8.0, near the top of the monster earthquake range.

Scientists give a 10 percent probability on the likelihood of a New Madrid quake that size over the next 50 years. For a smaller, but still damaging quake of magnitude 6.0, the probability is 25 percent.

Research on the New Madrid Fault has lagged behind similar work in California, where noticeable earthquakes are much more common, but began to pick up the 1980s and 1990s.

Since then, authorities have often advised Memphis residents to set aside enough emergency supplies to take care of themselves for up to a week, since help won’t be coming right away. Those warnings are widely ignored, but the devastation left by Katrina has ordinary citizens thinking more about emergency planning, too.

Sandra Hall, 58, said she’s building a stock of supplies.

“I used to keep an emergency kit, but whenever I needed something, I just went to the kit and got it and then didn’t replace it,” she said.

But seeing the plight of Katrina victims, including several thousand who sought refuge in Memphis, has raised doubts about how much immediate help the government will provide.

“If they can’t take care of those people,” Hall said, “how are they going to take care of us?”