Your Safe Place: How to Avoid or Minimize Earthquake Risk

By
David Franke
-
Safe Places Report No. 7:

This is the first of several reports where I will show you how to avoid or minimize risk from natural threats when selecting your new Safe Place.

We each have our individual assessments of the natural threats we fear the most.  For me, those are earthquakes and tornadoes, because they can strike with very little or no warning and you can lose all or most of your material possessions (including your home and your furnishings in it, and your automobiles), not to mention the potential for loss of life.  With advance planning, though, you can choose an area for your new home where earthquake risk is nonexistent or minimal.  Even if you must live in an earthquake-prone area, there are steps you can take to protect your life and your property as much as possible.

California comes immediately to mind when we think of earthquakes, and indeed California accounts for two-thirds of our nation’s earthquake risk.  But all of the Pacific coast is at risk, from California to Alaska and west to the islands of Hawaii.  You will want to check on earthquake risk for any location in the western half of the U.S., including (recently) Oklahoma.  Even in the eastern half of the nation, there are very seismically active areas—such as the dangerous New Madrid seismic zone (around the confluence of Missouri, Kentucky, southern Illinois, Arkansas, and Tennessee) and the less dangerous Southern Appalachian Seismic Zone, stretching from northeastern Alabama to southwestern Virginia, and centering in eastern Tennessee.

A general overview of the 2014 USGS National Seismic Hazard Map, indicating the probability of earthquakes throughout the United States. (Source: US Geological Service)
Links to Helpful Sites
Links to Some Geographically Specific Sites
Some Final Advice

If you relocate anywhere on the Pacific coast, check your property location’s susceptibility to tsunami damage, which would often follow under-the-ocean earthquake activity.

For information on natural threats, it is always a good idea to check with your relevant city, county, and state agencies—those involved with natural resources, emergency management, and such.  Local real estate sources may not always be completely reliable in detailing risks, though you should let them know of your concerns and that you will be doing independent research on this.

And the links provided above are just a partial listing of what is available through a robust search engine like DuckDuckGo.com.  If you find another site that you consider particularly useful, please email me with that information.

You Were Warned

The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.  But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.  The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”

–Matthew 7:25-27

Go here for a listing of my previous Safe Places Reports.

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David Franke
David Franke
David Franke was one of the founders of the conservative movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s, starting his media career at Human Events and National Review (editorial assistant to William F. Buckley Jr.). His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Esquire, and many other publications. His books have included Safe Places, The Torture Doctor, Richard C. Young’s Financial Armadillo Strategy (as co-author to Dick Young), and America’s Right Turn (with Richard A. Viguerie). He was Senior Editor of Silver & Gold Report in the 1980s, and served as the writer/editor of John Naisbitt’s Trend Letter in the 1990s. A native Texan, David now lives in Virginia’s beautiful Shenandoah Valley.