Re: East Coast Earthquake 8-23-2011

[Jay Ashworth <jra () baylink com>]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Patrick W. Gilmore" <patrick () ianai net>

> On Aug 24, 2011, at 8:55 AM, JC Dill wrote:
> > On 23/08/11 3:13 PM, William Herrin wrote:
> > > A. Our structures aren't built to seismic zone standards. Our
> > > construction workers aren't familiar with*how* to build to seismic
> > > zone standards. We don't secure equipment inside our buildings to
> > > seismic zone standards.
> >
> > They should be.
> > They should be.
> > You should.
> >
> > Earthquakes can happen anywhere. There's no excuse to fail to
> > build/secure to earthquake standards.
>
> Tornados can happen anywhere, there's no excuse to fail to
> build/secure for tornados.
>
> [Etc.]
>
> Things that cost money are not done unless the probability of the
> danger is higher than vanishingly small. This temblor - at 5.8 with no
> injuries or fatalities - was the largest earthquake on the entire east
> coast in 67 years, and the largest in VA in well over a century. Think
> of the _trillions_ of dollars which could have been put into
> healthcare, public safety, hell, better networking equipment :) we
> could have used instead of making all buildings on the east coast
> earthquake safe.

False economy.  That argument was valid *before* the Internet became a 
Generally Mission Critical Utility.  It is now.  And, alas, commerce being
what it is, it's not deployed to be *nearly* as failover redundant as it
was designed to be,[1]

Cheers,
-- jra
[1]Anyone who wants to debate either half of this, change the subject line. :-)
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                  Baylink                       jra () baylink com
Designer                     The Things I Think                       RFC 2100
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