美国国家公共电台 NPR 25 Years After The Northridge Earthquake, Is LA Ready For The Big One?

 

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Twenty-five years ago today here in Los Angeles, at 4:30 in the morning, the 6.7 magnitude Northridge earthquake hit. Fifty-seven people died as this area went dark, freeways were destroyed, buildings collapsed². It was one of the costliest³ disasters in U.S. history, causing over $40 billion in damages. Los Angeles was caught unprepared.

And decades later, there are still questions being asked about whether they are ready for the next one. KPCC's Jacob Margolis has been looking into this for a new podcast, called, "The Big One: Your Survival Guide," which is supposed to do what it suggests. It is to help people in Southern California get ready for the big one and also show how people might not be as prepared as they think. Jacob, welcome.

JACOB MARGOLIS, BYLINE⁴: Hey. Thanks for having me.

GREENE: Let's just dig into this moment looking back 25 years ago. For people who are not familiar with LA, I mean, can you just put in context how big a deal Northridge was?

J. MARGOLIS: Yeah. So imagine you're laying in your bed. It's 4:30 in the morning. Presumably, you're sound asleep. And all of a sudden, this random⁵ force of nature that no one had predicted just rips you from it. You head outside. You see your neighbors milling about in kind of the dawn light as it starts to break, and they look like - it looks like a scenario⁶ from "The Walking Dead." And as the sun comes up, you can actually start to survey the damage. I talked to my dad about it - 'cause I was a bit young at the time - and asked him what he saw that day. And he actually let me know.

MARK MARGOLIS: I remember driving down one of the main streets, and there were broken gas lines, as well as broken water lines. There were also flames coming out of the water. Very surreal. You know? Burning water. I mean, how often do you see that?

GREENE: Wow. That's an image.

J. MARGOLIS: Absolutely. And it was chaos⁷. And the entire time you're trying to recover from the quake, there's these aftershocks rolling through, one after the other. So there's this really deep feeling of some sort of, like, unknowable force just upsetting your life.

GREENE: Well, I mean, clearly, that was so destructive, you know, I'm afraid to ask. But talk about exactly what scientists are predicting in terms of the next big quake here.

J. MARGOLIS: There's an infinite number of scenarios⁸, but one of the most studied is a possible 7.8 magnitude quake on the San Andreas Fault. And I asked seismologist Lucy Jones, who was the lead author for the "ShakeOut" report, which studied specifically that about the quake and how it compared to Northridge.

LUCY JONES: Northridge was an event that disrupted our community for a year or two. The big San Andreas earthquake is going to disrupt the lives of everybody in Southern California, and it could take us decades to recover what we lose.

J. MARGOLIS: So 7.8 versus⁹ a 6.7, which is what we saw in Northridge. We're talking about 44 times stronger than back in 1994.

GREENE: Forty-four times? I mean, are we - I mean, she said disrupting the lives of people for years. But I mean, are we talking about almost destroying much of Los Angeles?

J. MARGOLIS: It's going to take a lot to recover. I mean, we're looking at possibly 1,800 people could die, thousands could be injured. Big buildings could collapse¹, roads in and out of the area could be impassable. We could suffer losses in the hundreds of billions. And the most scary to me are the fires that are going to be caused by electrical and gas problems, which could spread just across the cities. And it's going to take 48 to 72 hours to get outside help in. There will not be enough emergency responders to fight all those fires and to help all the people that need help. And so that period of time to me is one of the scariest.

GREENE: Well, I guess real question, Jacob, is how ready is Los Angeles for something like that? Did they learn a lot of good lessons from Northridge?

J. MARGOLIS: They did. I mean, there's new building codes for hospitals, for freeways, for certain apartment buildings, as well as retrofit programs. And they're also working on improving really important things, like our water system, which will crack and break when the big one rolls through, most likely. That said, we have a long way to go. And overall, I think especially on the individual level, people are very unprepared.

GREENE: KPCC's Jacob Margolis is host of the new podcast, "The Big One: Your Survival Guide." Jacob, thanks.

J. MARGOLIS: Thanks so much.

1 collapse   

vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷

参考例句：

• The country's economy is on the verge of collapse.国家的经济已到了崩溃的边缘。
• The engineer made a complete diagnosis of the bridge's collapse.工程师对桥的倒塌做了一次彻底的调查分析。

2 collapsed   

adj.倒塌的

参考例句：

• Jack collapsed in agony on the floor. 杰克十分痛苦地瘫倒在地板上。
• The roof collapsed under the weight of snow. 房顶在雪的重压下突然坍塌下来。

3 costliest   

adj.昂贵的( costly的最高级 )；代价高的；引起困难的；造成损失的

参考例句：

• At 81 billion dollars, Katrina is the costliest natural disaster in American history. “卡特里娜”飓风造成了近810亿美圆的损失，是美国历史上最严重的自然灾难之一。 来自互联网
• Senator John Kerry has proposed a tax on the costliest health plans sold by insurance companies. 参议员约翰？克里(JohnKerry)已经提议对保险公司销售的高价值的保险计划征税。 来自互联网

4 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

5 random   

adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动

参考例句：

• The list is arranged in a random order.名单排列不分先后。
• On random inspection the meat was found to be bad.经抽查，发现肉变质了。

6 scenario   

n.剧本，脚本；概要

参考例句：

• But the birth scenario is not completely accurate.然而分娩脚本并非完全准确的。
• This is a totally different scenario.这是完全不同的剧本。

7 chaos   

n.混乱，无秩序

参考例句：

• After the failure of electricity supply the city was in chaos.停电后，城市一片混乱。
• The typhoon left chaos behind it.台风后一片混乱。

8 scenarios   

n.[意]情节；剧本；事态；脚本

参考例句：

• Further, graphite cores may be safer than non-graphite cores under some accident scenarios. 再者，根据一些事故解说，石墨堆芯可比非石墨堆芯更安全一些。 来自英汉非文学 - 环境法 - 环境法
• Again, scenarios should make it clear which modes are acceptable to users in various contexts. 同样，我们可以运用场景剧本来搞清楚在不同情境下哪些模式可被用户接受。 来自About Face 3交互设计精髓

9 versus   

prep.以…为对手，对；与…相比之下

参考例句：

• The big match tonight is England versus Spain.今晚的大赛是英格兰对西班牙。
• The most exciting game was Harvard versus Yale.最富紧张刺激的球赛是哈佛队对耶鲁队。